(Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp. disclosed the first known cases of coronavirus infection among its employees Thursday, joining fellow tech giants Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc. in revealing the disease in their ranks.
Microsoft said two employees, one working out of its main Redmond, Washington campus and a second, a remote LinkedIn worker, have contracted Covid-19. Both have been quarantined, a company representative said.
“We are working closely with local public health authorities to provide the necessary support for our colleagues and their co-workers,” a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement.
One of the pair worked on Microsoft’s main campus and came into close contact with a small number of fellow staffers, who have been notified about the situation. Microsoft has determined that the second worker didn’t have any contact with people either at Microsoft or its unit LinkedIn.
Microsoft had asked workers who can to do their jobs from home through March 25, and that guidance remains unchanged based on the new cases.
Separately, Google told its Bay Area employees that they can work from home because of the virus, according to a person familiar with the matter. The voluntary policy covers headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., as well as campuses in Sunnyvale and San Francisco. Just this week, Google called off its flagship conference, a May event called I/O, that brings together thousands of people from around the world who partner with or build apps and websites for Google’s digital services.
(Updates with Google’s new work from home policy in final paragraph)
–With assistance from Alistair Barr.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at [email protected], Vlad Savov, Colum Murphy
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