Twitter is asking its employees across the globe to work from home over concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
The company announced the new plan on Tuesday, following a suspension of all non-critical business travel and events. The work-from-home policy is mandatory for employees in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, due to government restrictions, and “strongly” encouraged for those elsewhere. Twitter has about 5,000 global full-time employees.
“Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus for us – and the world around us,” reads a blog post by Jennifer Christie, head of Twitter’s human resources. “We are operating out of an abundance of caution and the utmost dedication to keeping our Tweeps healthy.”
Twitter’s policy is one of the most cautious as tech companies continue to clamp down on travel, pull out of tradeshows, and cancel major events out of fear of the rapidly spreading virus. On Monday, Google announced that it was canceling its Google Cloud Next event, which was scheduled for April in San Francisco, and Microsoft said it will not be hosting its MVP Summit this month near Seattle. That followed an announcement from Facebook last week, which canceled its most publicized annual event, its F8 developer conference.
Meanwhile, a petition with about 20,000 signatures is circling in the hopes that organizers will cancel the Austin’s annual South by Southwest, a conference Facebook and Twitter already pulled out of.
Twitter said it will work to make its meetings and internal tasks doable remotely. And while employees will be encouraged to stay home, the offices will remain open for those who need to come in or prefer to work there. Meanwhile, the company is increasing the deep cleaning and sanitizing of all its work spaces, and will be offering pre-packaged food options for employees.
The company said that its criteria for the new policy will “evolve over time” as it gets more information.
The news comes as four more deaths from the coronavirus were announced in Washington on Tuesday. The epidemic has already exceeded 90,000 cases and caused 3,000 deaths worldwide. In the U.S., about 100 cases have been reported to authorities and six people have died.
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