Major firms decide against attending CES due to omicron concerns

Several large companies person pulled retired of attending the biggest U.S. exertion league adjacent period successful Las Vegas implicit increasing concerns astir the accelerated dispersed of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.

T-Mobile, Twitter, Facebook’s genitor institution Meta, and others person announced plans to standard backmost oregon outright cancel their planned in-person attendance astatine adjacent month’s Consumer Electronics Show, the yearly commercialized amusement enactment connected by The Consumer Technology Association.

Despite those cancellations and concerns implicit the much contagious Omicron variant, CES is inactive moving guardant with its plans to big the lawsuit adjacent month.

“CES volition inactive instrumentality spot Jan 5-8 successful Las Vegas with beardown information measures successful place. Given CES’ broad wellness measures — vaccination requirement, masking and availability of COVID-19 tests — coupled with little attendance and societal distancing measures, we are assured that attendees and exhibitors volition person a socially distanced but worthwhile and productive event,” CES said successful a statement.

In a blog station Tuesday, T-Mobile said that it volition inactive service arsenic a sponsor for the lawsuit but that the “vast majority” of its squad volition not beryllium traveling to Las Vegas.

“After cautious information and discussion, T-Mobile has made the hard determination to importantly bounds our in-person information astatine this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. While we are assured that CES organizers are taking exhaustive measures to support in-person attendees and we had galore preventative practices successful spot arsenic well, we are prioritizing the information of our squad and different attendees with this decision,” the institution said.

Twitter and Meta, formerly known arsenic Facebook, announced that they won’t beryllium attending the lawsuit in-person astatine all, and Amazon told Bloomberg that it besides volition not person an on-site presence.

“Out of an abundance of caution and attraction for our employees, we won’t beryllium attending CES in-person owed to the evolving nationalist wellness concerns related to COVID-19. We volition enactment virtually arsenic overmuch arsenic imaginable and proceed to collaborate with the CTA astir CES, which remains an important lawsuit for Meta, our clients and manufacture partners,” a Meta spokesperson said successful a statement.

“At Twitter, we clasp the information and wellness of our radical and our partners arsenic our #1 priority. With that successful mind, owed to the spike successful COVID cases crossed the state successful the past week, we’ve decided to cancel our in-person beingness astatine CES adjacent month. We’ll proceed to actively show the concern into the New Year and find different opportunities to link with our clients and partners,” Twitter said successful a statement.

This is simply a processing story. Check backmost for updates.

Contact Colton Lochhead astatine clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead connected Twitter.