Twitter closes offices in New York and San Francisco amid Delta outbreak

‘We’re continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritise the health and safety of our Tweeps’

Photograph shows the logo of US social network Twitter displayed on the screen of a smartphone and a tablet in Toulouse (AFP via Getty Images)

Twitter has closed its offices in New York and San Francisco following an outbreak of the Delta variant in the US, which has led to a surge in coronavirus cases.

Its decision to shut the doors of its two largest offices came just two weeks after they reopened, and alongside a pause in reopenings of other Twitter office locations.

“Twitter has made the decision to close our opened offices in New York and San Francisco as well as pause future office reopenings, effective immediately. We’re continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritise the health and safety of our Tweeps,” a company spokesperson said.

Fellow tech companies Google and Apple have also delayed a return to office work, with employees largely remaining working from home until October this year.

A Twitter spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle that employees who had returned to the office previously were requires to have a vaccinated, while they were also given the option to remain working remotely if they did not want to come in.

However, the emergence of the Delta variant, which is now the dominant strain in the US, and a change in guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about mask-wearing indoors, prompted the company to announce it was postponing its office reopening.

Last year, Twitter’s HR chief Jennifer Christie suggested the company would not go back to pre-pandemic working conditions.

“People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way,,” the Daily Mail reported her saying. “Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”