Apple ordering frequent COVID testing for all corporate, retail employees

Apple will reportedly begin requiring regular coronavirus testing for both vaccinated and unvaccinated employees working at its offices or brick-and-mortar stores.

According to The Verge reporter Zoe Schiffer, the new policy will apply to both corporate and retail staffers. Vaccinated employees will need to get "infrequent tests," while those who are unvaccinated will be subject to more regular testing. It'll take effect in October.

The move follows an Apple ramp-up in Covid-19 testing availability that kicked off in August. Although the company began sending more at-home testing kits to employees and encouraged their use, it did not require staffers to test themselves.

In contrast with other technology companies, Apple has yet to implement any sort of vaccine mandate, citing employee privacy. Earlier in September, the company began collecting voluntary information on the vaccination status of its employees, however.

Apple initially planned to bring workers back to the office at least a few days a week by September, but has delayed that timeline twice. Currently, a return to in-office work has been postponed until January 2022 at the earliest.

Employees at Apple have pushed back against the in-office work requirement, penning letters to Apple executives and using internal channels to advocate for more flexible work arrangements. Apple executives, for their part, are sticking with their plan to have staffers return to offices.

12 Comments

baconstang 1153 comments · 10 Years

About 3 years ago

"It respects natural immunity which appears to be all but ignored now."

Oh, that's the kind of immunity that 90+% of hospitalized Covid patients have, correct?

rinosaur 32 comments · 6 Years

baconstang said:

"It respects natural immunity which appears to be all but ignored now."

Oh, that's the kind of immunity that 90+% of hospitalized Covid patients have, correct?

No it’s the immunity after you’ve had it that’s up to 27x better than the vax.

"No it’s the immunity after you’ve had it that’s up to 27x better than the vax."
"That's the immunity that comes from having the antibodies as a result of having contracted the virus and recovered."

Ahhh.. So that's what those 100,000ish souls are doing in the hospital. They're getting 'Active immunity' so they won't get it again. Assuming they don't die in the process or develop 'long Covid' symptoms. Makes purrrfect sense.

entropys 4302 comments · 13 Years

Vaxxed or unvaxxed isn’t the issue here.

It’s the testing regime itself. How long does these requirements and impost on civil liberties continue? If temporarily justified, how do we ensure they don’t become permanent?

If the disease itself is endemic, beyond the point of restraining it effectively, are these actions still justified? And if a high proportion of the population has had the vaccine, does that not count?

And it isn’t really so much about individual businesses and what they might do, it’s about government restrictions and oversight of the people.

When and how will this all be wound back, and most importantly, how do we make sure they are? Because if that isn’t actively planned for and governments held to account to make sure they are, liberty will never be given back.

cgWerks 2947 comments · 8 Years

designr said:

It seems like regular testing is a good approach. It respects natural immunity which appears to be all but ignored now. It also respects individual's concerns about the current vaccines.

The thing is, very good rapid antigen testing has been available since very early on in the pandemic. It costs much less (~$5 per test) and takes minutes (instead of hours or days). Given all the issues with PCR, one very good questions is why it hasn't been widely used. (It's almost a rhetorical question at this point, IMO.)

But exactly, they could easily test in situations where it would be deemed necessary. That's always been an option, for everyone.

baconstang said:

"It respects natural immunity which appears to be all but ignored now."
Oh, that's the kind of immunity that 90+% of hospitalized Covid patients have, correct?

No, those would be the claimed (w/o evidence, as far as I've been able to tell) people who are unvaxxed and haven't yet had Covid. While people who have had Covid already can contract it again, the vaxxed are *much* more likely to do so, and it seems are more likely to spread it than those who have had Covid already (or even those who haven't and are unvaxxed).

"SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf

- Testing a subset of low-Ct samples revealed infectious SARS-CoV-2 in 15 of 17 specimens (88%) from unvaccinated individuals and 37 of 39 (95%) from vaccinated people
- Ct values <25 were detected in 7 of 24 unvaccinated (29%; CI: 13-51%) and 9 of 11 fully vaccinated asymptomatic individuals (82%; CI: 48-97%), and 158 of 232 unvaccinated (68%, CI: 62-74%) and 156 of 225 fully vaccinated (69%; CI: 63-75%) symptomatic individuals.
- Although few asymptomatic individuals were sampled, these results indicate that even asymptomatic, fully vaccinated people might shed infectious virus.
- Importantly, we show that infectious SARS-CoV-2 is frequently found even in vaccinated persons when specimen Ct values are low.

Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination | medRxiv

designr said:

That's the immunity that comes from having the antibodies as a result of having contracted the virus and recovered.

This is nothing new. You can read under "Active Immunity" here.

Actually, it's even better than that. It includes T-cells and a much broader ability to detect variants, instead of just last-year's virus.

The downside, is of course, that you'd have to get and recover from Covid. For most healthy, young people, that isn't *usually* that big of a deal. So, there is a risk-calculation here. The problem is that as more data keeps coming in, one side of that calculation is looking more and more scary.

We'll just all have to hope and pray this guy*** isn't right: https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/the-last-post
Because if he is, Apple might have a bunch of job openings to fill over the next couple of years (as well as a lot of other companies).
(*** btw, you might want to have a peek at his bio before responding to this with the usual 'conspiracy theory' tripe.)