Apple is continuing to take preventative measures against the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. by canceling all ‘Today at Apple’ sessions at Apple stores in the U.S. and Canada.
Earlier this week, ‘Today at Apple’ sessions in Seattle and San Francisco stores were canceled until March 29. Cult of Mac confirmed Friday that the company has canceled all further sessions at all retail locations in the U.S. and Canada for the foreseeable future.
Apple is being cautious with its wording about the cancelations. There’s zero mention of the coronavirus concerns in the message posted on the webpages for individual stores. When you try to search for Today at Apple sessions at your local store you’ll see the following message:
“As a precautionary measure, we are temporarily pausing Today at Apple programming. Please check back for updates.”
Apple adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It appears that Apple is taking an abundance of caution not to scare consumers from visiting stores for now. All of the stores are still open for regular business hours. That could change though depending on how intensely the pandemic hits certain states and cities.
Apple also introduced new measures to help prevent the spread of COVID19 by limiting the number of customers who can enter and halving the total seats in a store. Customers can no longer try on AirPods or Apple Watch units. Employees are also told to stay three feet away from customers and other staff members.
The World Health Organization declared that COVID19 is now a global pandemic. That could lead Apple to reduced store hours. Temporary closures similar to what we saw in China is also highly possible. All 42 Apple stores in China re-opened on Friday with limited hours.
As of publication, there are 40 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 out of 1,626 confirmed cases in the United States.
