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The Masked Singer: Jackie O on 'over the top' coronavirus rules

As Melbourne heads into stage-4 lockdown restrictions, Channel 10’s The Masked Singer has implemented ‘over the top’ safety precautions to make sure the show can go on.

Jackie 'O' Henderson is a judge on the show and has opened up about some of the rules she and fellow judges David Hughes, Dannii Minogue and Urzila Carlson have to follow during filming.

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Jackie O says The Masked Singer filming is very different. Photo: Channel 10

On The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Monday Jackie said the new COVID restrictions “so over the top” and there is “a lot of sanitising going on”.

“When I finished Masked Singer last year, we'd probably finished at around 10pm. [This year] we're going until two in the morning,” she told listeners.

“We have a Zoom audience at home of super-fans, so we have to wait for them to vote.”

She also revealed there are screens between judges.

“People can't be near each other, we've got partitions in between us. There's a lot of stuff going on. We can't even stand next to one another,” she said, adding you “just couldn't get any stricter”.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews imposed the city’s first ever nighttime curfew and the state government has declared a “state of disaster” following another 671 new cases on Sunday.

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The judging panel won't look like this in 2020. Photo: Channel 10

Of course these won’t be the only differences to The Masked Singer this season, after it was revealed that comedian Urzila Carlson would replace Lindsay Lohan as judge.

Lindsay Lohan is unable to travel to Australia due to border restrictions in place because of the coronavirus.

The changes to production are similar to those implemented by teams working Channel Nine’s The Voice Australia earlier this year.

Midway through the competition the coronavirus pandemic impacted filming and left the two international coaches - Boy George and Kelly Rowland - ‘tuning in’ via video as they remained on opposite sides of the globe, while competitors sung to an empty room with the usual cheering audience also there only virtually.

Artists and hosts stood the mandatory 1.5m away from each other and crew could be seen wearing face masks.

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