Ever since the emergence of the COVID-19 virus in late 2019, the world has been grappling with one of the deadliest pandemics in recent memory. And despite many applaudable efforts from governments all around the globe, it seems that we’re not out of the woods.
There’s no denying that the ongoing outbreak of this new infectious disease has had a terrible effect on the economy, especially when more obvious contenders like the tourism industry are concerned, but coronavirus also brought the entertainment to its knees, not only shutting down productions on many fronts, but also disrupting the moviegoing experience.
In fact, Variety reported in late 2020 that the cinematic ecosystem lost approximately $32 billion in revenue because of the pandemic. Even now, thousands of theaters still remain closed throughout the world. As if we hadn’t had enough of this nightmare already, the new Omicron variant is winding through several countries in Europe, Asia, and America. This particular strain is said to multiply 70 times faster than the Delta variant, a finding which has frightened a lot of communities.
Now, after announcing a record-breaking 11,194 cases of COVID-19, of which more than 2,500 were Omicron, Denmark has decided to shut down theaters amid the holiday season to curb the further rampage of the virus.
“This is not a lockdown of society as we saw last winter, but we need to immediately reduce activity in society,” announced Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Other Nordic countries are also implementing similar restrictive mandates, though the Danish prime minister also promised that the government will compensate businesses affected by this situation. Ultimately, this must be a real buzz-killer for people who were looking forward to catching the new holiday blockbusters in theaters.
