Fred Hutchin­son Cen­ter ini­ti­ates manda­to­ry work-from-home pol­i­cy as out­break roils busi­ness­es, con­fer­ences

Slow­ly but sure­ly, domi­noes are falling.

As death and case counts rise in Wash­ing­ton and cas­es con­tin­ue to pop up around the coun­try, the emerg­ing US coro­n­avirus out­break is dis­rupt­ing work sched­ules, jeop­ar­diz­ing med­ical con­fer­ences and forc­ing busi­ness­es and re­search in­sti­tutes to clear out their of­fices and force em­ploy­ees to work from home for weeks.

In the Seat­tle area, where 10 of the 11 US coro­n­avirus deaths have tak­en place, the Fred Hutchin­son Can­cer Re­search Cen­ter has ini­ti­at­ed a manda­to­ry work-from-home pol­i­cy for every­one but “es­sen­tial, on-cam­pus staff” that will last at least through the end of the month. Their de­ci­sion fol­lowed a King Coun­ty pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tion, and they will be joined by the Seat­tle-based tech gi­ants, among oth­er com­pa­nies. Both Ama­zon and Mi­crosoft in­sti­tut­ed sim­i­lar poli­cies.

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