Banking giant UBS bucks vax-or-ax mandate sweeping US and will allow workers who refuse to get vaccinated to work from home

 The CEO of UBS Group AG banking, an international financing service with more than 25,000 U.S. employees, has said it would allow workers who don't want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to work from home. 

The move comes after more than 40 of the largest companies operating in the U.S. imposed vaccine mandates for their workers with deadlines in September and October amid the delta variant's spread.    

UBS CEO Ralph Hamers said it was the best move for his company as different country's around the world have different rules and regulations.

'Every country has a different legal framework around what you can and can't make mandatory' with respect to vaccines, Hamers said at the Swiss Economic Forum in Interlaken on Thursday. 'The pandemic has delivered solutions to manage the risk of carrying the virus and passing it to your colleagues, and that is to work from home.' 

UBS has around 70,000 employees worldwide, with more than a third in the U.S., Bloomberg reports. 

Its largest offices are located in New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut.  

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UBS AG's office in Stamford, Connecticut. The global banking giant employees more than 70,000 people world wide, with more than a third working in the U.S.

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More than 40 of the largest companies in the U.S. have said employees must get the COVID-19 vaccine, with deadlines set in September and October

It is not the first Swiss-based finance company to show leniency toward its workforce. Credit Suisse issued a similar rules last week, signaling a continued disruption of global banks' efforts to get workers back to in the office. 

In the U.S., large financial institutions - such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Northwest Mutual - have made the vaccine mandatory for its employees. 

A memo form Morgan Stanley leadership to staff said the mandate was necessary to 'provide greater comfort for those working in the office,' Fortune reported. 

The U.K.-based HSBC Bank will continue to allow employees to work from home.  

While tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have also pushed for all U.S. employees to be vaccinated, Apple and Amazon have chosen to delay bringing all employees back to the office. 

Apple employees were set to return in early September, but CEO Tim Cook pushed the date back to January 2022, a move Amazon mimicked, Forbes reported. 

Apple and Amazon cited worries over the spread of the delta variant, with the U.S. reporting nearly 40,000,000 new cases over the last 30 days and more than 638,000 deaths, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said. 

Nearly 75 percent of eligible adults have at least taken one jab of the vaccine.  

While cases in the United States are still rising, the rate has slowed in recent weeks, leading many experts to believe the variant that devastated the nation is running out of fuel.

Cases grew by 67 percent from August 2 to August 16, from 85,000 per day to 142,000 per day, and only 15 percent, 139,000 per day to 160,000 per day from August 17 to 31.

The sharp decline in case rise could be a blip on the radar, a brief respite before a larger spike to come, or it could be the beginning of the end of 2021's summer surge.