As new variant delays return to offices, many in US don’t mind

As new variant delays return to offices, many in US don’t mind

WASHINGTON: When Romain Daubec and his wife Monica left San Francisco last summer for Denver, Colorado, they thought their telework hundreds of miles from their offices would last no more than a half-year. But the stunningly rapid spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 has them settling in for a new way of life that now, they say, feels more “natural.”

Across the United States, a growing number of companies are delaying their employees’ return to the office out of concern over the new wave of disease. But like the Daubecs-he is French, she is American-more and more people across the country have settled in for a second year of telework-willingly this time, with little desire to return to the office, content and comfortable with their new personal and professional lifestyle.

The Delta variant, now dominant in the United States, has taken a heavy toll. An average of nearly 113,000 new daily cases of COVID-19 were registered over the previous seven days-a 24 percent increase over the prior week, Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday. One employer taking note was Facebook, which on that same day announced that it would not require workers