Some Apple Stores are requiring employees to wear masks again

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Apple Store Social Distancing
Apple Store Social Distancing (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Mask requirements are coming back to some Apple Stores.
  • The company is encouraging all store employees to once again wear masks.
  • The rollbacks are due to the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

As the Delta variant continues to spread throughout the world, Apple appears to be rolling back its strategy for some Apple Stores.

As reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company is once again requiring employees at some retail locations to wear masks. While the policy is still optional at other stores that are located in areas without a particularly high spread of the new COVID-19 variant, Apple is strongly encouraging all employees to wear masks.

Apple is now strongly urging retail store employees to wear masks again and is once again requiring it in some regions. Apple had dropped mask requirement for store employees in June.

This is the second move that Apple has made recently in response to the Delta variant. Earlier today, the company announced that it is delaying its return to the office by at least a month.

The iPhone maker becomes one of the first U.S. tech giants to delay plans for a return to normality as Covid-19 persists around the world and cases involving a highly transmissible variant increase. Apple will give its employees at least a month's warning before mandating a return to offices, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal policy.

Apple had originally planned to bring employees back to offices for three days a week in September as part of their new hybrid work policy. The new policy has received criticism from a lot of employees at the company who wish to remain remote.

Joe Wituschek
Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.