Daily Covid cases cross 70,000 in the US, Google & Apple postpone return to work on virus surge

Return to office plans for corporate America is taking a back seat as the United States faces a fresh surge of Covid cases and rising vaccine hesitancy in many parts of the country. Nationwide, the four-week Covid case count has more than doubled from the previous four weeks. This is making companies rework "back to office" plans.

• Google: Will push back its official office return to mid-October and require workers at its campuses to get vaccinated.
• Apple: Back to requiring mask at US retail stores, delays return to office by a month
• Facebook: Will require employees to be vaccinated to be able to return to work
• Lyft Inc. is now calling employees back in February
• Ford Motor is reinstating mask mandates at some of its facilities.

Read/Watch Also: Masks are back on in the US

As per data available from Kastle Systems almost 35% of U.S. workers were back at their offices as of July 21, vs 29% at the start of June. Finance firms and banks which had asked for employees to return in June are yet to make any changes to in-office staff policy despite the new CDC guidelines to get masks back on.