Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connel poses at the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.
Steve Granitz | WireImage | Getty Images
The 2021 Grammy Awards have been postponed, according to multiple media reports Tuesday.
The annual event was scheduled to take place on Jan. 31, but concerns over the ongoing spread of the coronavirus have led the Recording Academy to look for a new date for the ceremony. Organizers are reportedly eyeing March for the rescheduled event.
Plans for this year’s Grammys were already quite different than previous telecasts. The show was not going to have an audience and only presenters and performers were going to be on-site for the event. Additionally, nominated artists would not have been permitted and would have accepted awards remotely.
Beyonce leads the 2021 Grammy nominations with nine nods, while Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift and Roddy Ricch each had six. It is currently unclear if Trevor Noah, who was the original host for the event, will still host this year’s show.
The ceremony typically takes place in Los Angeles, but the city and its surrounding county are experiencing higher-than-average Covid-19 cases that have led to record hospitalizations.
More than 45,000 new cases were reported in California on Sunday, as the state’s hospitalization rate reached its highest since the start of the pandemic. Of those new cases, around 12,400 were from Los Angeles County, according to the state’s health department.
Hospitals in Los Angeles County are discharging patients as fast as possible to free up space for more critical patients and ambulance operators were told to not transport people to hospitals who have little chance of survival, the paper reported.
The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency told EMS services Monday that they need to conserve oxygen and to only give oxygen to patients with oxygen saturation below 90%, though there are some exceptions.
—CNBC’s Chris Eudaily contributed to this report.
