Apple has recommended that employees at its Silicon Valley headquarters work from home due to coronavirus fears, making it the latest in a growing list of companies instituting new remote work policies because of the outbreak.
A source familiar with the matter told Business Insider that employees in Santa Clara Valley — the location of Apple's Cupertino headquarters, in the San Francisco Bay Area — have been recommended to work from home. An Apple spokesperson from the company did not respond to a request for comment.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has sickened more than 100,000 people and killed more than 3,300, and is causing mounting disruption around the globe — disrupting supply chains and forcing the closure of corporate offices and major events.
Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where multiple other big tech firms are also introducing new remote work policies. Facebook is recommending that employees in the Bay Area work from home, while Google has introduced it as an option. Currently, there are 20 confirmed coronavirus cases in Santa Clara county, where many tech companies like Google and Apple are based.
Amazon and Facebook have both already asked their employees in Seattle — the center of a US outbreak of COVID-19 — to work remotely, and Twitter has made the same request of its nearly 5,000-strong workforce.
Apple's hardware supply chain is heavily dependent on China, and it has faced disruption as a result of the global outbreak.
The company previously restricted all non-"business-critical" travel to China for its employees, and closed a number of stores in the country.
