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DBS Evacuates 300 Singapore Staff After Coronavirus Case

DBS Evacuates 300 Singapore Staff After Coronavirus Case

(Bloomberg) -- DBS Group Holdings Ltd. has evacuated 300 employees from an office floor in the heart of Singapore’s financial district after one of its workers tested positive for the coronavirus.

Southeast Asia’s biggest bank has told the staff members on Level 43 at Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 3 to work from home for the time being, the company said in a statement. The number of evacuees was given in a memo seen by Bloomberg earlier and confirmed by the bank.

“During this difficult time, the bank will be providing this employee and his family with every support and guidance,” it said. “We are also currently conducting detailed contact tracing with all employees and other parties that the infected employee may have come into contact with.” DBS is deep-cleaning and disinfecting the affected office space.

DBS Evacuates 300 Singapore Staff After Coronavirus Case

The coronavirus had already been detected in Singapore’s financial district earlier this week, prompting some companies to send workers home and temperature screening checkpoints to be set up at the entrances of several towers. Singapore has 47 confirmed cases of the disease, according to health ministry figures as of Tuesday. Only Hong Kong has a larger number outside mainland China, excluding an outbreak on a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama.

The virus that originated in China has now claimed 1,115 lives, all but two on the mainland. Singapore last week raised its disease response level to “orange,” the same grade used during the SARS epidemic, as it braced for what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said was a “major test for our nation.”

Care Packs

Since the alert, DBS has been doing temperature screening and stepped up cleaning of its premises. Next week it will issue staff with care packs including masks, a thermometer, hand sanitiser and vitamin C, it said in the statement.

“The health and well-being of our staff are a top priority for us, and we will lend them every support to get through these uncertain times,” DBS said.

The infection comes a day before the bank is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings. DBS economists last week cut their forecast for Singapore’s gross domestic product by 0.5 percentage point, citing the expected impact of the outbreak on tourism.

DBS has a 30% stake in MBFC Tower 3, which serves as its headquarters. The 46-story property is home to more than 4,800 employees, according to a filing in December 2012. Other tenants include Rio Tinto Group and law firms Clifford Chance and WongPartnership, according to the property’s website.

A worker at an unnamed firm in nearby MBFC Tower 1 was confirmed as being infected with the coronavirus over the weekend, and another case was detected at Clifford Centre. That person is an employee of United Industrial Corp., according to an advisory to tenants in the building where UIC is located.

Standard Chartered Plc is an anchor tenant at Tower 1. The U.K. bank has declined to comment on whether the virus case comes from among its employees.

--With assistance from Serene Cheong, Faris Mokhtar and Alfred Cang.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chanyaporn Chanjaroen in Singapore at cchanjaroen@bloomberg.net;Alfred Cang in Singapore at acang@bloomberg.net;Faris Mokhtar in Singapore at fmokhtar1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Russell Ward, Katrina Nicholas

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.