Office-building owners and small businesses near such properties are bracing for another letdown in January, as the latest Covid-19 variant threatens to interfere with widespread company plans to return to the workplace.
Before the Omicron variant surfaced overseas last month, employers throughout the U.S. were preparing to call back employees to the office after the holidays. Now, a small but rising number of companies have modified or delayed plans as uncertainties swirl over the severity of the variant and its resistance to vaccines. That list includes Lyft Inc., Ford Motor Co. , Uber Technologies Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, though not all point to the new variant as the reason.