The Coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) has reached the United States and the state of Washington, where several headquarters and offices of technological giants are located, is being most affected. To date, the local press reports 70 cases of infection and 10 deaths. In an attempt to halt the spread of COVID-19, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft asked employees in Seattle, one of the pockets of infection, to work from home.
The news follows after Amazon and Facebook closed some of their Seattle offices. In question, there is confirmation that employees of both companies contract the disease, advances The New York Times. Right at the beginning of March, the company led by Jeff Bezos made it known that two of its employees from Milo, Italy, had been infected. Days later, Amazon confirmed that another from Seattle also contracted COVID-19. After discovering the first case of infection in an office in the same city, Facebook opted to close it by March 31.
Remote work is being one of the main recommendations of the technological giants to employees working in the region. Both Google and Facebook have also restricted visits to their Washington offices to reduce the risk of spread.
COVID-19 is causing a disruption in the technology world. Reflecting the fear of a pandemic, the share of technological giants in the market is falling "down sharply". On February 24, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet all lost $ 237 billion, each of which saw its share price drop by more than 4%.
Apple is facing difficulties in the production of equipment and has already warned its employees and retail stores about possible failures in the delivery of iPhones. Above all, there may be problems in replacing damaged equipment, with an estimated delivery time of two to four weeks, according to staff reports.
The outbreak that has already infected more than 97,000 people and caused, to date, about 3,300 deaths, has also led to the cancellation of several events: from the 2020 edition of the Mobile World Congress GDC, through the Global Markiting Summit and the F8 Developer Conference of Facebook.
