Apple Closes South Carolina Store After COVID-19 Exposure, Other Stores Cutting Hours Due to Staff Shortages
Apple has temporarily shut down its retail store located in Charleston, South Carolina after more than 20 staff members were exposed to or tested positive for COVID-19, reports Bloomberg.
According to the website for the store, it will be shuttered until Monday, August 23. According to Bloomberg, stores of this size typically have 70 to 80 employees, so around a quarter of the staff may have been exposed.
Apple appears to be suffering from staff shortages at the Charleston store and other retail locations, both because of COVID exposures and the difficult labor market. Stores remain operational at this time, but some have been forced to close earlier and open later because of a lack of staff.
Continuing issues with the delta variant of COVID-19 have impacted Apple's store plans. Apple stopped requiring customers and employees to wear masks back in June, but then reinstated mask mandates at many retail locations in the United States in late July. So far though, Apple has not reinstated widespread store shutdowns.
Apple had also planned to bring back in-person Today at Apple classes on August 30, but has since pushed back those plans because of the prevalence of the delta variant.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Related Stories
Apple retail stores are implementing stricter COVID measures, once again requiring customers to wear masks in all locations in the United States and enacting social distancing rules in some locations that had been eliminated earlier this year.
Apple in November dropped its masking requirements for customers in many U.S. states due to positive trends in vaccinations and declining COVID-19...
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, the number of Apple retail stores in the U.S. that are temporarily closed today has surpassed 20. Not all of the closures are related to the virus, with five stores closed in Washington state following inclement weather.
The latest high-profile locations to be shut for business include Apple Carnegie Library in Washington, D.C., Apple Century City in Los...
Apple will no longer require customers to wear a mask to enter many of its retail stores in the United States, reports Bloomberg. Mask mandates will disappear at several stores starting on Friday due to positive trends in vaccinations and declining COVID-19 cases.
More than 100 stores will drop the mask mandate starting Friday, with the policy then expanding to additional stores based on...
Apple will require retail and corporate employees to submit proof of receiving a COVID-19 booster shot, or else face frequent testing to enter the workplace, the company announced in an internal email obtained by The Verge.
"Due to waning efficacy of the primary series of COVID-19 vaccines and the emergence of highly transmissible variants such as Omicron, a booster shot is now part of...
Just yesterday, Apple told its retail staff in the United States and Europe that it would start bringing back some in-person Today at Apple classes starting on August 30, but now Apple has reversed course.
In-person Today at Apple sessions will no longer be resuming at this time, with Apple putting in-person classes off because of the ongoing rise of the Delta variant across the United...
Apple today told retail staff in the United States and Europe that it is planning to bring back in-person Today at Apple classes starting on August 30, reports Bloomberg.
Classes are set to resume at most U.S. locations, but Apple's plan to roll out in-person classes could be delayed at some Apple Store locations in areas where there is a surge in COVID-19 cases. With Today at Apple...
Customers who visit U.S. Apple Stores will once again be required to wear masks at most retail locations, reports Bloomberg.
Apple dropped its mask requirement for vaccinated customers and employees back in June, but earlier this month, Apple began requiring employees in select regions to wear masks and encouraged other employees to do so.
Now both customers and employees in areas where...
Amid spiking cases in the ongoing health crisis, Apple has started urging its employees to wear masks in retail store locations once again, and is mandating it in some areas, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Apple stopped requiring fully vaccinated customers and employees to wear masks at Apple Store locations in June, but with the Delta variant spreading across the United States and...
Popular Stories
Apple is working on a number of new products that are set to launch this fall, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that it will be "the widest array" of new devices that Apple has introduced in its history.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman explains that Apple is working on four new flagship iPhones (iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Max, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max), an updated low-end Ma...
Apple has always emphasized the depth of thought that goes into the design of its products. In the foreword to Designed by Apple in California, a photo book released by the company in 2016, Jony Ive explains how Apple strives "to define objects that appear effortless" and "so simple, coherent and inevitable that there could be no rational alternative."
But every once in a while even Apple...
Three months after their launch, the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros continue to experience high demand and seemingly short supply, with shipping dates for both models stretching into multiple weeks in several of Apple's key markets.
In the United States, the baseline 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip is estimated to ship in three to four weeks, promising an arrival by at least...
AT&T today announced the launch of upgraded AT&T Fiber plans, which support speeds of up to 5 Gigabits for some customers. There are two separate plans, one "2 GIG" plan and one "5 GIG" plan, available to new and existing AT&T Fiber subscribers.
According to AT&T, the new plans are available to nearly 5.2 million customers across 70 metro areas including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, San...
Apple's AirPods have been credited with saving a woman's life after a potentially fatal fall, People reports.
When a 60-year-old florist in New Jersey tripped and hit her head in her studio, she lost consciousness and awoke heavily bleeding. With nobody around to call for help, she realized she had her AirPods in, and used a "Hey Siri" command to call 911. An operator was able to stay on the ...
Apple's second-generation AirPods Pro could deliver higher fidelity audio than the AirPods Max over-ear headphones, despite being comparatively small in-ear buds, recent reports have suggested.
In a recent note to investors, seen by MacRumors, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that the second-generation AirPods Pro will offer improved audio quality thanks to support...
A number of developers are upset with an increasingly problematic iCloud server issue that is causing some apps that have implemented iCloud support to fail to sync properly.
As outlined on the Developer Forums and on Twitter, there are CloudKit connectivity issues that have been occurring since November. Some users of apps that have iCloud support built in are seeing the following message:...
As we roll into the latter half of January, we're starting to hear more about a potential spring Apple event, which is likely to take place in March or April. There are a number of potential announcements on deck, so an event would be a good opportunity for Apple to get them all out there.
We've also been going back and forth on some iPhone 14 rumors, and we've taken a look at a number of...
Top Rated Comments
We were attacked, we had the weapon to combat it and win, but no, half the nation is part of a cult who felt the need to side with the enemy (Covid) just to own the libs. Even though their cult leaders are fully vaccinated. Idiots.
And now, unvaccinated people are dying from a 99% preventable virus/disease. And the cycle will continue as we try to chase variants with boosters. We learned nothing in the 100 years since the last pandemic, despite having the technology and money to end it.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/politics/cdc-masks-covid-19-infections/index.html
But hey, at least you'll get lots of likes by spreading hate against people that are weighing their risks vs vaccines that 9 months and 100's of millions of doses later still do not have full FDA approval and still have their manufacturers protected from any liability.
Luckily under 18 only accounts for .05% of all COVID deaths and they are more likely to die from the flu then COVID in a typical year….