Coronavirus Outbreak: Facebook Restricts Employee Travel To China

As coronavirus sweeps across China, the social-media giant, Facebook has reportedly asked its employees to avoid all non-essential travel to the mainland. Employees who do need to visit the world's most populous country, will have to obtain special permission from the company. Facebook has also asked its staff based in China or who have recently returned from trips from there, to work from home. The death count in the novel coronavirus outbreak has climbed to 360 with the number of confirmed cases crossing over 17,000, China’s national authorities announced on Monday. The death count has surpassed the toll from 2002-03 SARS outbreak.

Cases of coronavirus spread has been reported in at least 19 other countries around the globe that includes Canada, the US, Australia, France, Philippines, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Macau, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and many other countries.

To curb the epidemic, China has decided to adopt a host of measures including delaying and reducing conferences and major events, extending the current Spring Festival holidays and supporting online work.

Cases reported on Coronavirus

The coronavirus was first emerged in central city of China, Wuhan which later spread throughout the country and beyond. The authorities of China quarantined Wuhan.

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These restrictions are likely to impact Facebook's hardware division that sells devices like Oculus VR headsets and the Portal video chat hub. The divison of Hardware needs frequent travel to China from the company's Silicon Valley office. However the company's current products won't be impacted, but this move certainly could cause engeering delays on future devices, according to the people in Facebook. In the meanwhile, the social-giant is looking to some other facilities situated in Vietnam to pick up work which can't be done in China.

According to a report by 'The Verge' Razer is also restricting its employees' travel to China and advising them to work from home. Asus India also warns of a temporary shortage of the ROG Phone II due to coronavirus outbreak.