CMA Points out COVID-19 Protocol Following Charley Pride’s Demise a Thirty day period After Attending CMA Awards

Maren Morris, a triple winner at the awards, was a single of the first to query how Satisfaction had been infected. She tweeted, “I never want to soar to conclusions mainly because no relatives statement has been manufactured, but if this was a outcome of the CMAs being indoors, we should really all be outraged. Relaxation in electricity, Charley … F— this f—ing yr.”

“We need to have responses as to how Charley Satisfaction acquired covid,” Mickey Guyton wrote, bringing the dialogue to her Twitter page.

The CMA Awards have been held at Audio Town Middle in Nashville, attended only by performers, nominees and chosen guests sitting down at socially distanced tables.

In an job interview with Billboard after this year’s CMA Awards — an occasion that experienced a variety of artists, which include Florida Georgia Line, Lee Brice, Rascal Flatts and Lady A, not attending simply because they or a member of their family examined positive for COVID-19 — CMA CEO Sarah Trahern tackled the arduous tests protocols their workforce had in place.

“We began screening weeks just before the present, in Oct. It is not just the artists and their attendees we tested — we tested pretty much everybody: stagehands, creation crew, our personnel, in addition to talent. We have our final load out happening now at Songs Metropolis Middle, so screening does not just halt mainly because talent is no lengthier on web page. We also consulted with an epidemiologist through the system,” Trahern explained of preparing for the first awards show in the course of the pandemic to include a reside, if socially distanced and constrained, audience.

“None of the artists who examined good had at any time entered the location,” additional Trahern. “The protocols we followed ended up required not only by the CDC but the local overall health section, as nicely as the unions and guilds.”