The View | Why Asia’s office markets have less to fear from the Delta variant than those in the West

Name: US Covid-19 deaths could increase by another 100,000 unless Americans change their ways
Uploaded: 2021-09-14T00:15:17.000Z
Duration: 3 min 2 s
Description: US Covid-19 deaths could increase by another 100,000 unless Americans change their ways

The much-heralded return to the office has been put on hold in the US, amid a surge in Covid-19 cases

But the virus has caused less disruption to workplace strategies in Asia, where employers and employees prefer not to blur the work-life boundary

Reading Time:3 minutes

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Pedestrians cross a road in Beijing’s central business district on May 27. Even as the Delta variant spreads across Asia, office re-entry rates have been high in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Photo: Bloomberg

Nicholas Spiro

Published: 8:15am, 14 Sep 2021

The much-heralded return to the office has come to a halt. The rapid spread of the highly infectious Delta variant has forced many high-profile multinational companies to delay plans to get staff back to their desks.

The postponement of return-to-office dates is most apparent in the United States, where cases are now averaging almost 150,000 a day, on a par with their level midway through the brutal second wave at the end of last year.

A sharp slowdown in vaccination rates has contributed to more stringent precautions. On September 9, Microsoft became the latest big company to shelve plans to bring staff back to its US offices, joining other leading firms, such as Google and Ford, that have pushed their re-entry plans into 2022.

Office utilisation rates in New York remain stubbornly low. Only 23 per cent of workers were back at their desks in early August, data from building security company Kastle Systems showed.

In London, where many firms are introducing hybrid models of working that combine some days at the office and some at home, offices were only at 11.5 per cent of their capacity on average in early August, according to Remit Consulting. Although financial services firms have been more aggressive in trying to bring staff back, hybrid arrangements are becoming the norm.

03:02

US Covid-19 deaths could increase by another 100,000 unless Americans change their ways

However, in Asia, the impact of the pandemic-induced shift in working patterns on the performance and outlook for the office sector has been relatively benign.

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.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}The View | Why Asia’s office markets have less to fear from the Delta variant than those in the West

The View | Why Asia’s office markets have less to fear from the Delta variant than those in the West