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For a brief moment, it looked like life would fully return to normal after Labor Day. Kids would go back to school; parents would return to work at the office.
But then the Delta variant took hold.
After dropping to a low of 13,000 cases a day in the late spring, the Delta-driven spread has increased cases four-fold to 56,000 cases per day, according to the Washington Post. One in five of new cases is in Florida, with the state averaging almost 16,000 new cases per day as of Aug. 1, according to the New York Times. Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri also continue to be hot spots but caseloads are surging across the country, with 97% of hospitalizations among the unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Those drastic surges have caused companies to rethink their return-to-work strategies. For TV station groups, these decisions are mostly being made by general managers at the local level depending on their local community’s transmission rates. Parent companies are keeping close watch, offering guidance based on ever-changing CDC recommendations.
Many companies have staff back in the office two or three times a week, but don’t expect to have everyone back full time until at least October. And while many companies were targeting this fall, those dates are getting pushed back even further as everyone ponders with how to deal with Delta.
What TV stations have learned over the past 18 months, however, is that they can run their businesses effectively with many