Apple To Reopen Australia Stores On Thursday

Australia is slowly returning to normalcy after weeks of stay-at-home orders and social distancing restrictions being implemented.

Following reports of states slowly reopening businesses, Apple is following suit and will reopen 21 of its stores across Australia on Thursday. This is after over seven weeks of shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We're excited to begin welcoming visitors back to our Australia stores later this week. We've missed our customers and look forward to offering our support,” an Apple spokesperson told 9News.

"With many Australians working and learning from home, our initial focus will be providing service and support at the Genius Bar.”

The stores will open at 10:00 a.m. but will have reduced operating hours and strict social distancing protocols. Temperature checks will also be in effect before customers enter the stores to ensure the health safety of guests and employees.

"Our social distance protocol means a limited number of visitors in the store at one time so there may be a delay for walk-in customers. We recommend, where possible, customers buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up.”

This news follows Apple CEO Tim Cook’s earlier confirmation stores in Australia and Austria will be opening soon.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Cook said the company is “going to look at the data and make a decision city by city, county by county, depending on the circumstances in that particular place.”

So far, Australia’s measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus has been successful. The country has one of the slowest spread of the virus in the world.

As of May 5, 11:08 a.m. local time, there are only 6,825 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 95 deaths. This pales in comparison to the United States with 1,212,835 coronavirus cases and 69,921 deaths, according to Worldometer data.