With the rise of the fourth wave of COVID-19, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai has issued a statement, requiring all their employees to be vaccinated before returning to the office. With this announcement, Google becomes one of the first major tech companies to make vaccination compulsory for its employees.
The news came right after the announcement of new vaccination requirements by Biden’s administration which now requires all federal officers to be vaccinated or face the consequences of frequent COVID testing. If given the choice, most would agree that getting the vaccine shot is better than getting your nose poked with a cotton swab every few days (it’s equivalent to modern-day torture we know)
For the time being, Google’s vaccination requirement would apply to its US offices and then move on to other regions in the upcoming months. It is also to be noted that Google has increased the duration for work from home policy till the mid of October instead of September as the new Delta variant cases continue to spike across the USA and many other regions.
It’s still up for debate whether other tech giants like Apple would be following in Google’s footsteps and mandate vaccination for its employees or if they’ll just change their office policies for now. According to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, “…our main focus right now is on when to come back, we pushed it from early September to October…we are monitoring things daily to really conclude whether that is the right answer or not.” It seems like Apple and other companies are looking over the possibility of making vaccination compulsory and would eventually change their requirements in the future.
Vaccination might not be the permanent solution to the virus, but it’s still effective against fighting the disease and as more and more companies make it mandatory for their employees to get vaccinated, the better chances we have of fighting this virus sooner than later.