It might also be covid related. People are working from home, people responsible for system upkeep might not be immediately responsive, more demand on the servers for whatever reason, etc.
I would agree that the coronavirus could be a factor here. At the same time, I've been noticing issues since probably December or January (before the coronavirus started being a real problem), which makes it seem like maybe there are multiple issues.
Of course, I'm not actually internal to Microsoft or Github, so I have no idea and it's all opaque to me.
Alternative explanation - they've been deploying big new features with some regular cadence lately. New features carry risk and I think we're seeing that.
Maybe it's the demand side? With remote work, the intensity of usage went up at least in our company as we rely more on written communication. At the same time, some people will use the time to start side projects or get into programming.
On the other hand, shouldn't there be a productivity drop with so many people working from home while their kids also aren't in school? I'd expect that to offset any increase in demand—after all, Git isn't Slack; remote work shouldn't cause people to push all that much more often, right?
Personnel may be partially unavailable, but - home or office - developers are doing the same job as they always did. At least from the users point of view it didn't change that much.
Of course, I'm not actually internal to Microsoft or Github, so I have no idea and it's all opaque to me.