Foxconn telling iPhone assembly staff to stay home because of coronavirus
Key Apple supplier Foxconn has told its Shenzhen staff not to return to work after the current and extended holiday just yet, because of continuing coronavirus concerns.
Foxconn staff are currently on a break because of the Lunar New Year, but had been due to return to work on February 10 -- a return date that Foxconn has emphasized in recent days.
According to Bloomberg, Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, owner of Foxconn, has issued a text message specifically to workers in the Shenzhen plant.
"To safeguard everyone's health and safety and comply with government virus prevention measures, we urge you not to return to Shenzhen," says the text message. "We'll update you on the situation in the city. The company will protect everyone's work-related rights and interests in the duration. As for the happy reunion date in Shenzhen, please wait for further notice."
Tens of thousands of people work at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant, but the majority of the company's iPhone assembly takes place at the Zhengzhou facility. It's not clear whether the same message was sent to workers there.
However, Bloomberg also says that workers returning to Zhengzhou from outside the province will be sequestered for 14 days.
"As a matter of policy and for reasons of commercial sensitivity, we do not comment on our specific production facilities," Foxconn said in a statement in response to Bloomberg's queries. "We have been closely monitoring the current public health challenge linked to the coronavirus and we are applying all recommended health and hygiene practices to all aspects of our operations in the affected markets."
Foxconn has recently reported that the coronavirus will affect production. The outbreak is also affecting Apple's AirPods production.
As of February 6, the World Health Organization reports that there have been 28,276 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and 564 deaths. These figures are up from the previous day, with a further 3,722 cases and 73 deaths. However, WHO says that no new countries reported any cases in the 24 hours before February 6.
Separately, BBC News reports that Foxconn is switching part of its production facilities to make surgical masks. Reportedly, Foxconn aims to produce two million masks per day by the end of February.
Test production has already begun at the Shenzhen plant, and Foxconn announced the news with a posting on WeChat social media.
"In this war against the epidemic, every second counts," it said. "The earlier we take precautionary actions, the earlier we can prevent the virus, the earlier we can save lives, the sooner we can overcome this."
Foxconn staff are currently on a break because of the Lunar New Year, but had been due to return to work on February 10 -- a return date that Foxconn has emphasized in recent days.
According to Bloomberg, Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, owner of Foxconn, has issued a text message specifically to workers in the Shenzhen plant.
"To safeguard everyone's health and safety and comply with government virus prevention measures, we urge you not to return to Shenzhen," says the text message. "We'll update you on the situation in the city. The company will protect everyone's work-related rights and interests in the duration. As for the happy reunion date in Shenzhen, please wait for further notice."
Tens of thousands of people work at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant, but the majority of the company's iPhone assembly takes place at the Zhengzhou facility. It's not clear whether the same message was sent to workers there.
However, Bloomberg also says that workers returning to Zhengzhou from outside the province will be sequestered for 14 days.
"As a matter of policy and for reasons of commercial sensitivity, we do not comment on our specific production facilities," Foxconn said in a statement in response to Bloomberg's queries. "We have been closely monitoring the current public health challenge linked to the coronavirus and we are applying all recommended health and hygiene practices to all aspects of our operations in the affected markets."
Foxconn has recently reported that the coronavirus will affect production. The outbreak is also affecting Apple's AirPods production.
As of February 6, the World Health Organization reports that there have been 28,276 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and 564 deaths. These figures are up from the previous day, with a further 3,722 cases and 73 deaths. However, WHO says that no new countries reported any cases in the 24 hours before February 6.
Separately, BBC News reports that Foxconn is switching part of its production facilities to make surgical masks. Reportedly, Foxconn aims to produce two million masks per day by the end of February.
Test production has already begun at the Shenzhen plant, and Foxconn announced the news with a posting on WeChat social media.
"In this war against the epidemic, every second counts," it said. "The earlier we take precautionary actions, the earlier we can prevent the virus, the earlier we can save lives, the sooner we can overcome this."
Comments
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/85320e2ea5424dfaaa75ae62e5c06e61
I've watched the numbers and it looks like similar to the flu, the virus runs its course in about two weeks. So that means the recovery number is just starting to significantly ramp this week (it's gone from about 500 on Sunday to over 1700 today. As its slope points upward and matches the slope of the confirmed cases graph, we will see a leveling off in the number of active cases, I'm calculating around 60,000-90,000, with just as may people recovering daily as are contracting the virus. That should occur in about two weeks. After that, efforts to control the outbreak should begin to yield positive results, reducing the growth rate of new infections, now about about 16%/day and eventually seeing it die down as the weather turns warm,
1) You need to consider what recovered means here. With any virus or disease they do not classify someone as recovered until there the statically likely is so incredibly low that they feel there is absolutely no residual effects and no way that the it could reflate and infect anyone. With a nascent virus that we know so little about they are keeping people under observation, doing considerably more testing, and taking additional precautions when dealing with them (ii.e.: not just wearing gloves) to help make the best of not just the current case but all future cases. I'd say it's more important to look at the likelihood of death from this virus, and of the people that are dying their health, habits, and age. This is how learn about and get ahead of these issues.
2) They might be hiding something—there's certainly a long history of that—but they are certainly being more transparent than they were with SARS. I seem to recall reading that The Who and CDC have commanded China for their efforts with 2019-nCoV.
Posted yesterday;
https://www.livescience.com/possible-treatments-new-coronavirus.html
"As the coronavirus outbreak in China continues to spread, having infected over 24,000 people so far, scientists around the world are racing to find a treatment. Most of the people infected with the new coronavirus, dubbed 2019-nCov, have not received a treatment specific to that virus — because there isn't one.
In fact, none of the handful of coronaviruses known to infect humans has an approved treatment, and people who are infected typically receive care mainly to help relieve symptoms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, a handful of repurposed drugs, from drugs targeting Ebola to HIV, have already shown promise, according to new findings.
That's a long way from a cure for most cases, and "much shorter recovery duration" is wishful thinking based on the available data that I have seen.
“As there is no proven cure for the new coronavirus yet, existing antiviral drugs such as Oseltamivir has been used to treat patients with the coronavirus besides influenza,” said UOB Kay Hian senior health care analyst Carol Dou.
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3048888/could-cocktail-therapies-hiv-and-flu-be-magic-cure-new
Please provide links to where you are getting info...
People could get the novel coronavirus more than once, health experts warn — recovering does not necessarily make you immune
China will succeed in coronavirus counter-attack, Donald Trump says; 73 new fatalities reported
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049424/coronavirus-hubei-province-reports-69-deaths-and-2447-new
https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-02-07-20-intl-hnk/index.html
"Foxconn staff are currently on a break because of the Lunar New Year, but had been due to return to work on February 10" - that would be Monday you speak of, and this is literally the first line of the second paragraph of the story.
This is Foxconn, yes Foxconn, telling folks to stay home AFTER the 10th.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049623/coronavirus-hubei-province-reports-81-new-deaths-and-2841