With over 133,000 cases of COVID-19 globally and nearly 5,000 fatalities, international government officials are encouraging bans on large gatherings while global companies including Ineos Group officially endorse "social distancing."
London-based Ineos said in a March 12 news release that employees who cannot work from home are to maintain a "1-meter rule" within offices and plants to separate themselves from co-workers and help fight the spread of the coronavirus.
All its office-based staff must work from home "unless in exceptional circumstances," and Ineos is cancelling or postponing all group events. "We take our responsibility as a global manufacturer of essential products to every-day life very seriously, with health and safety our top priority," Ineos Chairman Jim Ratcliffe said in the release.
"Our responsibility and our focus is to ensure the plants that we run, which produce products essential to everyday life including the health care system, remain operational, with the safety of our employees the number one priority."