An office building on Los Angeles’ Sony Pictures lot has been shut down after the studio was informed that a recent visitor tested positive for coronavirus, multiple insiders told Variety exclusively.
On Tuesday, the studio sent out a wide memo informing staff that an unidentified person who attended a March 3 meeting inside the lot’s Astaire building (named for actor and dancer Fred) had contracted COVID-19.
While no subsequent cases of coronavirus have been reported at the Culver City, Calif., headquarters, and employees are now past the 14-day incubation period in which symptoms are said to manifest, leadership has shuttered the Astaire building and ordered a deep cleaning. The move was done, as the now widely familiar saying goes, “out of abundance of caution.”
The Astaire building houses editorial and production offices for shows and films shooting at Sony, according to insiders. The company has not directly been hit with a diagnosis among employees, as has been the case at the Santa Monica offices of Hulu and Universal Music Group, and the massive Netflix headquarters in Hollywood.
Read the note from Sony human resources to staff, obtained by Variety, below:
We wanted to make you aware that we will be vacating the Astaire building for deep cleaning. We were notified today that an individual who had visited Astaire on March 3 has tested positive for COVID-19. Although the individual was in Astaire 14 days ago, we will be deep cleaning out of an abundance of caution. We have received no other reports of confirmed cases in the building. The Astaire building will re-open on Thursday, March 19.
If you believe that you might have had exposure at the Astaire building on or around March 3, please refer to the current CDC guidelines.