Facebook has announced that it is not calling employees back to offices until January 2022. The social media giant has said that that decision was taken because of the rise in the number of cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19. The company had started planning to bring employees in the United States back to the office. It had announced that offices in America would reopen by September with 50 percent capacity. But the rise in new cases has forced it to defer the decision. The company said that its decision is based on the latest health data.

“Data, not dates, is what we are considering while asking calling our employees back to offices. The latest health data shows that cases of Delta variant are on the rise. It is in the interest of our employees in the United States not to come to offices until January 2022. We believe that this would be the case in some other countries as well. We continue to monitor the Covid-19 situation. Any plan to call employees back to the office will be finalized only after discussing things with experts. Everyone’s safety would be our priority when we will start coming to offices,” Facebook said.

Facebook was among the first few companies to shut their office in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic had started to begin. The decision was taken way before many areas in the United States came up with their own lockdown guidelines. Facebook also said that it would want employees to be fully vaccinated before returning to offices. The company has also said that it would embrace remote work going forward. Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg even said that as much as 50 percent of the company’s total employees could be working from remote locations in the next five to 10 years. Meanwhile, there are several other companies who have delayed their plans to call their employees back to offices amid growing concerns regarding the Delta variant.