McDonald's Locations See Major Changes to Stores Amid Omicron Surge

Your local McDonald's could be making a significant change to many stores amid the COVID-19 Omicron variant surge. According to Fox News, some franchisees of the fast food chain are trimming operational hours in response to staff shortages nationwide. Currently, McDonald's and its numerous franchisees employ nearly 800,000 people in the United States, so the lost hours is certain to have an affect on employees, as well as patrons. Customers may have to contact their local McDonald's restaurant to find out if it is impacted by the change.

A statement from McDonald's noted that "restaurants (95% of which are owned by independent franchisees) make local decisions on hours based on the needs of the customers they are serving." There is no overall plan by the restaurant chain to reduce hours. This echoes McDonald's Corp CEO Chris Kempczinski who says, according to Fox News, that "adjusting during these times is one of many priorities for the company's growth and well-being."

The ongoing Covid pandemic has had a major effect on how businesses function and operate, with many facing staffing issues for the past two years. Omicron is the second most concerning Covid-19 variation, after the previously worrying Delta mutation. Dr. Andrew Pekosz, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been researching the new variant, and he recently commented on the current findings. "We've been looking at ... people who have been vaccinated and then get an omicron infection," he began, per WTOP news.

"It really seems like if you get infected after getting vaccinated, your immune response is not only high, but it's also what we call broad," Pekosz continued. "Meaning, it starts to recognize all the previous variants that have been circulating almost as well as it recognizes your vaccine strain." He added, "We do think that infection on top of vaccination is probably the safest way to get this really strong immunity. The infection is now working with the vaccination to give you an even better outcome than the infection alone or vaccination alone."

While Omicron is certainly concerning, Pekosz says that the number of actual cases might be lower than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported. "We're seeing even more cases than we think we are out there," he said. "What that means is we're getting more and more of that really strong immunity ... and more people are having that strong immunity so that speaks to something I call population immunity." Pekosz went on to say, "Population immunity is what we see with influenza a lot. It's the fact that people have some immune responses that dampen severe disease and therefor the disease never seems as severe as it used to be because everybody's got some level of immunity."

Note: Headline amended to reflect the difference between McDonald's and its many franchisees.