Coronavirus Global Death Toll Climbs Over 3,400; Facebook Shuts London, Singapore Offices

The social networking giant told nearly 3,000 employees here to work from home after an employee, who was based in Singapore and visited the London offices between February 24-26, was diagnosed with the new Coronavirus.

New Delhi: As the global outbreak of deadly Coronavirus has infected more than 1 lakh people and killed 3,400 so far, social media giant a Facebook on Friday announced shutdown of its offices in London and Singapore after an employee was diagnosed with Covid-19. A staff member working at the US technology giant's Marina One office in Singapore was on Friday diagnosed with COVID-19, a spokesman told new agency AFP.

"We have immediately closed the affected areas for deep cleaning and advised employees based in the affected area to work from home until Mar 13," the staff member said in an emailed statement.

"We are therefore closing our London offices until Monday for deep cleaning and employees are working from home until then," the spokesman said. The report also said that the social media firm is now getting in touch with individuals who had direct contact with the infected person and has asked them to self-isolate and monitor themselves for any potential symptoms.

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The social networking giant told nearly 3,000 employees to work from home after an employee, who was based in Singapore and visited the London offices between February 24-26, was diagnosed with the new Coronavirus.

Facebook has already closed its Shanghai office until further notice, while employees in Italy and South Korea have been encouraged to work from home. Meanwhile, all staff in the San Francisco Bay area have been asked to work from home starting from Friday. Facebook is briefly closing all three of its London offices.



In the UK, there are 163 confirmed cases and there have been two deaths, whereas number of confirmed Coronavirus cases in Singapore reached 130 as of 06 March. The latest precautions come after San Francisco announced its first two coronavirus cases on Thursday.

In the United States, Facebook has already asked employees at its Seattle and Bay Area offices to work from home in order to reduced the threat of potential infection. Other tech conglomerates such as Amazon, Twitter, Google and Microsoft have made similar announcements with Twitter asking as many as 5,000 of its employees globally to work from home.