CNN closed its offices over the weekend as COVID-19 cases have recently increased in the United States, according to the cable station in a Saturday announcement.
Only employees who must work onsite will be allowed in its U.S. offices and have to remain masked regardless of vaccination status, said CNN President Jeff Zucker in a memo to workers.
“We are doing this out of an abundance of caution,” Zucker said, reported Reuters. “And it will also protect those who will be in the office by minimizing the number of people who are there.”
The directive was confirmed by CNN commentator Brian Stelter in a Twitter post on Saturday.
“Like other major media companies, CNN is making changes due to the new Covid surge,” Stelter quoted the memo as saying. The directive “essentially” means CNN is going “back to 2020 protocols” around COVID-19, Stelter said.
Earlier this year, CNN executives issued a rule requiring proof of vaccination for in-the-field and office workers, meaning the company likely has an exceptionally high vaccination rate. Over the summer, the network fired three employees for coming back to work without having received the vaccine, while Zucker at the time asserted that his company has a “zero-tolerance policy” over vaccines.
The Omicron variant, meanwhile, has prompted businesses, schools, and venues to shut down—although data is still being gathered to determine whether the variant causes more symptoms than the Delta variant. South African health ministry officials said on Friday that based on government data, the number of Omicron variant patients in the hospital is one-tenth that of Delta patients during its initial phase.
In New York state, authorities said they recorded a record number of COVID-19 cases in a single day. On Friday, the state said that 21,000 people tested positive on Dec. 16, topping the previous record that was set in January 2021.
“This is changing so quickly. The numbers are going up exponentially by day,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, told CNN.
Harvard University, Stanford University, and Cornell University—which all have exceptionally high vaccination rates—announced they would shut down their campuses due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in recent days. Cornell said it shut down its Ithaca, New York, campus and moved to “alert level red.”
Cornell officials reported some 900 COVID-19 cases in the past week—with many being the Omicron variant. The school has a 99 percent vaccination rate.
Prince George’s County Public Schools, located near Washington, D.C., said last week that students will move to a virtual learning format until the middle of next month due to an uptick in countywide COVID-19 cases. Last Wednesday, three Prince George’s County schools were forced to shutter due to the virus.
From The Epoch Times
