The New York Times delays its return to office, joining other companies.

The New York Times on Friday indefinitely postponed its planned return to the office as the contagious Delta variant causes a surge in coronavirus cases across the country.

The decision adds The Times to a growing list of companies that are changing their return plans, asking employees to wear masks again or requiring vaccinations. The Washington Post this week said it would require all employees to show they were vaccinated as a condition of employment, Uber said it would require all employees to be vaccinated and delayed its return to the office, and Lyft will not require employees to return to the office until February.

“In light of the evolution of the virus, including new trends around the Delta variant and the updated guidance from the C.D.C. this week on masking, we have decided to push out our plans for a full return at this time,” Meredith Kopit Levien, chief executive of The New York Times Company, wrote in an email to staff on Friday. The company had been planning for employees to start to return, for at least three days a week, on Sept. 7.

Ms. Levien said that The Times’s offices would be open for those who wanted to go in voluntarily, with a mandatory proof of vaccination.

The company is “not ready to specify a new date for a full reopening,” she wrote, adding that the company would provide employees at least four weeks notice before asking them to return.
Here’s what some other companies have said about their changing policies:

Twitter has closed its newly reopened offices in San Francisco and New York and indefinitely postponed other reopening plans.

Google will require employees who return to the company’s offices to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. It also said it would push back its official return-to-office date to mid-October from September. Google has more than 144,000 employees globally.

Apple will start requiring employees and customers to wear masks regardless of their vaccination status in more than half of its stores in the United States, it said on Wednesday, a new sign that shopping in the country may soon resemble earlier days of the pandemic.

Netflix will require the casts of all its U.S. productions to be vaccinated, along with anyone else who comes on set. It’s the first studio to establish such a policy.

Facebook will require employees who work at its U.S. campuses to be vaccinated, depending on local conditions and regulations. Facebook, which has roughly 60,000 workers, said in June that it would permit all full-time employees to continue to work from home when feasible.

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