WASHINGTON — Video conferencing service Zoom says it’s investigating the cause of outages that apparently affected some users’ ability to host and join in meeting.

Zoom, which has become a critical staple during the pandemic by allowing people to hold meetings online, said Sunday that the problems seemed to affect a limited number of users.

The problems appeared to have peaked around 5 a.m. with another spike around noon, according to the website Down Detector, which tracks disruptions in tech services.

“We continue to assess and monitor,” Zoom said on Twitter. “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.”

The company announced last week that it will open two new research and development centers — one in the greater Phoenix area and one in Pittsburgh.

Zoom will immediately begin recruiting software engineering talent in these areas, officials said. Employees will work from home until the offices are built and virus-related isolation measures are relaxed. The company expects this to occur this fall. The company said it has not settled on an office location, but the Pittsburgh one will be near Carnegie Mellon University.

These two centers will add to Zoom’s existing research and development, and support Zoom’s engineering leadership, which is based at its San Jose headquarters.

“Both Phoenix and Pittsburgh have incredibly well-educated, skilled and diverse talent pools that are well-positioned to help support Zoom’s ongoing growth and continued success,” said Eric Yuan, Zoom CEO.

From local and wire sources