Twitter: Latest tech company to ban employee travel due to coronavirus

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Twitter announced yesterday all nonessential employee travel is banned until further notice due to the coronavirus threat.

Twitter has banned all non-essential employee travel.

Image: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Twitter joins the ranks of Amazon and Google to halt nonessential employee travel due to the coronavirus threat.

The company announced the ban yesterday in a blog post and said, “We also have the responsibility of ensuring that the health and safety of our employees and partners is not compromised. We have continued to monitor the situation closely and are adjusting our internal policies to respond to this rapidly-evolving situation. On February 29, we informed our people and started notifying partners that we are suspending all non-critical business travel and events.”  

SEE: Coronavirus having major effect on tech industry beyond supply chain delays (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

“This policy is effective immediately and will continue until the World Health Organization or Centers for Disease Control deem it appropriate to step back from pandemic precautionary measures or when a vaccine becomes available.”

The ban is in place because, “Our goal is to reduce the risk that anyone at Twitter might contract or inadvertently spread the virus. It is important that we take these proactive steps to protect ourselves and others and minimize the spread of COVID-19.”

The cancellations are due to fear of novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The CDC has now 89 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US, including two dozen new cases of coronavirus reported in the US over the weekend. There have been emergency declarations in Florida and Washington state, and new warnings as a result of the additional cases in Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state, New York and Florida.

SEE: Coronavirus: Business and technology in a pandemic (ZDNet special feature)

The novel coronavirus has resulted in more than 3,000 deaths worldwide, with most in mainland China. So far, there have been 88,000 global cases confirmed as coronavirus spreads around the world. 

As a result,
numerous conferences and events have been cancelled
 as people fear being in contact with someone with the highly contagious virus. 

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the latest to cancel, and Facebook cancelled F8 last week. Mobile World Congress was the first to bail, with its February 12 announcement that it was cancelling MWC in Barcelona. Others include F5 Agility, Cisco Live Melbourne, Facebook’s annual marketing conference, DEF CON China and the Tokyo Marathon.

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