Procrastinating California techie holiday shoppers are in for a rude awakening if they plan on rolling up to an Apple Store in the final days before Christmas.
Apple temporarily closed all 53 of its retail stories in California because of the daily records being set for new coronavirus cases there. Last week, California suffered its four deadliest days of the pandemic.
Nearly 100 stores are temporarily closed worldwide, with more stateside closings in Alaska (one), Minnesota (four), Nebraska (one), New Mexico (one), Oklahoma (two), Oregon (one), Tennessee (four) and Utah (three). Stores in Brazil, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom either have closed or will soon.
“Due to current COVID-19 conditions in some of the communities we serve, we are temporarily closing stores in these areas,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “We take this step with an abundance of caution as we closely monitor the situation, and we look forward to having our teams and customers back as soon as possible.”
Orders and repairs can still be picked up in the coming days in California, and product help and store information is available on the Apple website. The closings began Friday, a day after the state said it no longer had intensive care unit beds available. Most of the state is under stay-at-home orders that reduce retail store capacity to 20%.
Every person with a phone in the San Francisco area received an emergency alert by phone. But if Bay Area residents did not get the alert on their Apple phones, they shouldn’t go running to the Apple Store for a solution.
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