Super Bowl attendees given masks, must wear them unless eating or drinking, says public health director

By CNN staff

Updated 1653 GMT (0053 HKT) January 26, 2022

The interior of SoFi Stadium in a picture taken on September 08, 2020 in Inglewood, California.

(CNN)All attendees at Super Bowl LVI will be given KN95 masks and will be reminded to keep their face coverings up at all times unless drinking or eating, said Los Angeles County of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer Tuesday.

Fans heading to the NFL Experience at the LA Convention Center, the NFL's «interactive football theme park» launching the week ahead of the February 13 Super Bowl, will receive free take-home test kits «with messaging to test before the big game,» said Ferrer. She said the NFL anticipates distributing over 60,000 test kits. The county will set up vaccination sites at the NFL Experience and anyone receiving first, second, or a booster dose of vaccine will be given free entry to the event. A KN95 mask, which will be distributed to all Super Bowl attendees.The NFL will offer free rapid testing at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood and the LA Convention Center «so that all attendees can test to know their status before they enter events» said Ferrer. Ferrer briefed the board on the week's Covid-19 statistics in the state's most populous county as the positivity rate has dropped from 17% to 14%. Read More«This downward trend is encouraging and signals that we are likely to pass the peak of Omicron transmission and are beginning to see a real decline in the number of newly infected individuals,» she said. Her optimism was tempered, noting that case rates are still high, averaging about 32,000 new infections per day and though hospitalizations have dropped, that number also remains high.