Microsoft is planning not to fully reopen its offices in the United States (US) before January next year according to reports.

The company has a six-stage plan in place to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic and resume operations according to The Verge .

Stage 5 is reopening its offices with restrictions while stage 6 is completely reopening its offices. The tech giant’s current timeline includes moving to stage 6 by January 19, 2021, as per the report.

Microsoft had allowed its employees to work from home back in March and had soon made it mandatory for them after the shelter in place orders.

Microsoft follows suit as other tech majors have also been pushing back their timelines for reopening of offices. Amazon is also lettings its employees work from home till January 2021. Facebook had earlier said that it will allow employees to continue working from home through 2020. Twitter has allowed its employees who wish to do so to work from home indefinitely.

Apple employees will not be returning to offices until early 2020.

Most recently, media reports stated that Google will allow employees to work from home until July 2021.

The policies are in place as the number of cases surges across the globe, especially in the US which is currently the worst affected country with the highest number of Covid-19 cases. Globally, over 17.4 million cases have been reported. The US has reported over 4.6 million cases with over 1.5 lakh fatalities as per reports.

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