Google Becomes Latest Tech Company To Delay Reopening As Delta Variant Spreads | Google

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Google backed off plans to welcome the majority of workers to its sprawling campus in September, becoming the last Silicon Valley company to delay reopening due to the wave of Covid cases.

The company announced Wednesday that it is postponing the return to office until mid-October and is implementing a policy that will eventually require anyone who returns in person to be vaccinated.

The decision sees Google join Apple and Netflix in postponing the recall of employees to the office due to concerns about the highly transmissible Delta variant, which now accounts for more than 80% of new cases in the United States. Twitter also halted plans to reopen and closed offices last week due to the Delta variant.

In an email to Google’s more than 130,000 employees worldwide, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is now aiming to bring the majority of its workforce back to its offices starting October 18 rather than the previous one. expected date of 1 September.

Google’s delay also affects tens of thousands of contractors that Google intends to continue paying while access to its campuses remains limited.

This extension will allow us to get back to work by providing flexibility to those who need it, Pichai wrote. This is the third time that Google has postponed the full reopening date of its offices.

Pichai said that once the offices reopen, everyone who works there will need to be vaccinated. The requirement will initially be enforced at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, and other US offices, before being rolled out to more than 40 other countries in which Google operates.

Facebook announced a similar policy Wednesday, saying it will make vaccines mandatory for U.S. employees working in offices. Apple is also reportedly considering the demand for vaccines.

This is the thing that needs to be done, because otherwise we are endangering workers and their families, said Dr. Leana Wen, professor of public health at George Washington University and former Baltimore City Health Commissioner. It’s not fair for parents to go back to work and sit shoulder to shoulder with unvaccinated people who could be carriers of a potentially deadly virus.

Since children under the age of 12 are currently not eligible to be vaccinated, parents can take the virus to them home from the office if they are hanging out with unvaccinated colleagues, Wen said.

The delays of these companies could influence other major employers to take similar precautions, as the tech industry has been at the forefront of the shift to remote work triggered by the spread of Covid-19.

Even before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March 2020, Google, Apple and several other major tech companies had told their employees to work from home. Many others in the tech industry have decided to let employees do their jobs from remote locations permanently.

Google’s decision to require the vaccination of office workers comes in the wake of similar initiatives that have affected hundreds of thousands of government employees in California and New York as part of strengthened measures to combat the delta variant. Joe Biden is expected to announce a mandate to vaccinate all federal government workers.

The rapid increase in cases over the past month has prompted more public health officials to urge tougher measures to help overcome vaccine skepticism and misinformation.

While other major tech companies may follow suit now that Google and Facebook have taken a stand on vaccines, employers in other industries may still be reluctant, predicted Brian Kropp, head of research for research firm Gartner. Less than 10% of employers said they want to require all employees to be vaccinated, based on regular Gartner surveys.

Google is seen as such a different type of company that I think it will take a bigger employer or two to do something similar in terms of game-changing, Kropp said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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