HomeNewscoronavirusCOVID-19 | Companies forcing employees to return to office are short-sighted: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

COVID-19 | Companies forcing employees to return to office are short-sighted: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella's statement came a day after Microsoft told its United States employees that it has delayed their return to offices indefinitely.

September 10, 2021 / 18:28 IST
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Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview on September 9 that companies that are forcing their employees to report to office amid rising COVID-19 Delta variant cases are “short-sighted”.

Nadella told CNBC: “I am looking forward to the entire world overcoming this challenge, because until we do so any particular company, region thinking they have found the answer, I think will just be short-sighted.”

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The Microsoft CEO added that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to hybrid work as employee expectations keep changing. He said: “The only way for organizations to solve for this complexity is to embrace flexibility across their entire operating model, including the ways people work, the places they inhabit, and how they approach the business process.”

Also read: Nearly half of Microsoft employees want to work from office

COVID-19 Vaccine
Frequently Asked Questions

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How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.
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