Due to the increasing number of Covid cases in London, many businesses are once again adopting work-from-home culture and schools conducting online lectures for students.
It’s the new year but still, people are facing the same old massive disruptions from the past two years and the pandemic has already disrupted the lives of Americans.
While the most recent variant to blame is the omicron strain, which is highly transmissible and more likely to evade the protection of vaccines. Over the last week, a seven-day average of daily new cases of the virus topped 386,000, a doubling from the week prior, according to CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.
Rates are likely even higher because there are delays in reporting over the holidays and an increase in at-home testing that may be keeping cases off the radar of officials.
Companies are pushing back their return-to-work dates as cases peak, including Chevron, Apple, Google, and Uber.
On the other side, dozens of colleges have announced they’re moving classes online. Harvard University said it would aim to move much of its work and learning remote for at least the first three weeks of January.
“Please know that we do not take this step lightly,” Harvard officials wrote in a letter to staff and students. “It is prompted by the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases locally and across the country.”
Other schools also making the change include The University of Chicago, George Washington University, and Columbia University. Many colleges will likely require that students have had their booster vaccine to return in the spring, as breakthrough cases become more common.