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Google campus in Mountain View, California (2019): Access only for vaccinated people in future
Photo: Amy Osborne / AFP
The employees of the internet giants Google and Facebook in the USA have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus before returning to the offices.
The companies announced this independently on Wednesday (local time).
What Google announced
Google boss Sundar Pichai said in an email to his employees, the content of which he later made public: "Everyone who comes to work on our campus must be vaccinated." The regulation initially affects the USA and will be in the coming months but also apply to other regions as soon as vaccinations are widely available there.
Google gave its employees the opportunity to work from home early last year.
Due to the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus, the number of cases is rising again in many places.
Pichai now wrote that the home office regulation will be extended until October 18.
The company Apple had already postponed the return to the office last week for an initial month, now until October.
However, the company has not yet announced any mandatory vaccination.
What Facebook announced
On Facebook, HR director Lori Goler said that the implementation of mandatory vaccinations for employees in the US offices would depend on "local conditions and regulations".
There will also be a procedure for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons.
The procedure with a view to locations outside the US would be examined further, it said.
The vaccination campaign in the USA is now on the spot - despite an abundance of vaccines and many vaccination incentives. Therefore, the states of New York and California as well as several cities have already announced compulsory vaccination for employees. According to President Joe Biden, the federal government is also examining compulsory vaccinations for its two million employees. According to the regulation under consideration, those who do not want to be vaccinated will have to undergo regular corona tests. However, Biden has clearly rejected the idea of a nationwide vaccination requirement.
In the USA, only 49 percent of the population of around 330 million people have been fully vaccinated to date.
Most recently, the number of daily new corona infections rose again to around 60,000 on average because of the particularly contagious Delta variant.
sol / aar / dpa
