Amidst Coronavirus Epidemic Twitter Asks Employees to Work from Home

Twitter has asked all its staff across the world to work from home starting coming Monday, in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly new epidemic caused by coronavirus.

Since emerging in central China late last year the outbreak has now spread across the world, killing more than 3,100 people and infecting over 90,000, and prompting a wave of travel restrictions across the world.

Keeping in view the intensity of the epidemic, the social media platform had asked its staff to avoid coming to the office, following similar requests by the governments in virus hotspots. Last week Twitter had also announced the suspension of events and ‘non-critical’ business travel anywhere in the world.

In a blog post recently, Human resources chief of Twitter Jennifer Christie wrote, “We are strongly encouraging all employees globally to work from home if they are able. Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus for us -- and the world around us.”

Christie also added that working from home would be mandatory for the employees at the company’s offices in Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

South Korea has recorded more than 5,000 confirmed cases COVID-19 infections, which is the largest number outside Mainland China. So far 28 cases of deaths have been recorded in South Korea. 

Meanwhile, the government of Japan has issued a notice for the closure of schools across the country and asked the employers to allow their employees, permission to work remotely.

After a month of break from work, most of the civil servants in Hong Kong have returned to work this week, they were asked to work from home for a month. The financial hub has recorded 100 cases of coronavirus infection.

As the virus continues to spread in more countries, the epidemics in South Korea, Italy and Iran are showing no signs of slowing down. Governments across the world are working to devise plans to combat the deadly epidemic in their own way without causing widespread social disruption and economic upheaval.

In the United States, so far six deaths linked to the coronavirus epidemic have been recorded and more than 100 confirmed cases in 15 states have been registered. 

The Trump administration is trying hard to restrict the epidemic, though a few days back it has been blamed for not taking the epidemic seriously with missteps such as defective diagnostic kits and highly restrictive rules for the administration of the tests, both of which are suspected to have contributed to the early spread of the virus in the country.