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Amazon halts non-essential travel, Google employees working from home

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Companies big and small have been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. In Asia ? and indeed across the globe ? organisations are taking measures to deal with the situation.

This week, Amazon announced that it has stopped all non-essential for its 798,000 employees worldwide.

While last Friday, staff from Amazon?s global operations team were also told not to plan any meetings requiring travel until at least April, it was reported in The New York Times.

It?s a similar situation at tech giant Google, which has expanded its employee travel restrictions by adding South Korea and Japan to the list of areas employees aren?t allowed to travel to ? having already includes China, Iran, and two Italian regions as no-go zones.

?We can confirm that one employee from our Zurich office has been diagnosed with the Coronavirus,? a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

?They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms. We have taken ? and will continue to take ? all necessary precautionary measures, following the advice of public health officials, as we prioritise everyone's health and safety,? the spokesperson added.

Google?s European headquarters in Dublin has taken matters a step further by directing its entire workforce to work from home. It?s unclear when the 8000 employees will return to work.

?We continue to take precautionary measures to protect the health and safety of our workforce, in accordance with the advice of medical experts, and as part of that effort we have asked our Dublin teams to work from home,??Google?said in a statement.

Twitter is also urging its 5000-strong global workforce to work from home.

?Beginning today, we are strongly encouraging all employees globally to work from home if they?re able. Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus for us ? and the world around us,? a twitter company?blogpost?said on Monday.

San Francisco-based Twitter ? which employs people across the globe ? said it would tailor its work practices to working from home but would keep offices open for employees who preferred to or needed to work at company premises,?with the exception of certain countries, such as South Korea and Japan.

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