NBCUniversal delays office return to Oct. 18 amid rising COVID cases

Comcast’s NBCUniversal is postponing its return to office, citing a rise in breakthrough cases of COVID-19.

NBC had been planning a large-scale return to the office after Labor Day, but it is now moving the date to Oct. 18 “at the earliest,” the company said Wednesday. And the company will require employees, when they return, to be vaccinated.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, Comcast chief administration officer Adam Miller broke the news to employees via an internal email.

“Recent developments, including the rise in regional positivity rates due to variants and breakthrough cases, and guidance from medical experts and authorities have led us to the conclusion that we need to alter our approach,” Miller wrote, adding that fully vaccinated employees can return to the office on a voluntary basis now.

When employees finally return in October, NBC will require its US employees to be fully vaccinated, Miller said. The company will also require those employees to provide details of their vaccination status.

Many other US companies have reassessed their office reopening plans amid spikes in the infection rate due to the Delta variant. Media companies like CNN and Discovery have delayed their return-to-work plans to October, while the New York Times has postponed its return “indefinitely.”

NBC joins other major companies like Disney, Netflix, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Uber in adopting some form of vaccine mandate as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread quickly across the country.