Fans attending Super Bowl LVI to be given KN95 masks

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Tuesday that fans attending the Super Bowl next month would be given free KN95 masks to be worn while attending the sporting event.

Ferrer said more than 60,000 test kits are also expected to be distributed by the NFL at the league’s interactive football theme park, dubbed the NFL Experience, which will be launched beginning on Feb. 5, CNN reported.

Ferrer noted that free rapid testing would be available at the LA Convention Center and SoFi Stadium. 

In an incentive to get more people vaccinated, the public health director also said that fans would be able to get into the Super Bowl on Feb. 13 for free if they received any of their three vaccination shots at the NFL Experience, according to the network.

The announcement comes as the United States is still reporting hundreds of thousands of daily COVID-19 cases, including over 1 million on Monday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), amid the spread of the highly transmissible and dominant omicron strain.

President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said on Sunday he was confident the peak of omicron infections would happen in most states around mid-February.

The top health official noted that it looked like the COVID-19 pandemic was going in “the right direction,” but he emphasized that Americans should get their booster shots if they were eligible, in order to avoid more severe effects from the virus that causes COVID-19.

“We do know … that, even with omicron, boosting makes a major, major difference in protecting you from hospitalization and severe outcomes,” Fauci said during “This Week” on ABC. “So, things are looking good. We don’t want to get overconfident, but they look like they are going in the right direction right now.”