IT corridor feels Covid-19 jitters
Employee in Mindspace tests positive for virus, IT firms ask staff to work from home
Panic spread, first across the Raheja Mindspace IT Park, and then the rest of the software hub of Cyberabad, on Wednesday when a company in one of its many buildings announced that one of its employee has been found tested positive for Coronavirus (Covid-19).
A city already on the edge since Tuesday, when the first positive case was confirmed in Hyderabad, IT employees and their management from all over the city pressed the panic button. Many offices asked their employees to work from home for the next few days.
The mayhem began with the company DSM, which has an office in Mindspace’s building number
20, had one of its employees, who had recently travelled to Italy, reportedly tested positive for
Covid-19.
In the morning, the company sent an internal mail to all its employees, asking them to leave the office immediately and work from home instead.
The screenshot of this email went viral on Twitter and was shared widely on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.
Several vernacular TV news channels also ran with this image.
Within an hour, employees of all companies in the building had learnt of the development.
Yash Technologies, which has offices on the sixth and tenth floor of the building, asked all its employees to leave immediately as a precautionary measure, telling them to work from home.
Cognizant, which has an office in the building, also asked its employees to leave.
An employee said, “We were anxiously waiting for any information from the management. My colleagues kept asking their managers regarding what they should be doing. At around 1 pm, we were finally asked to leave.”
Indeed, tension in the software office was palpable. “When we came to work in the morning, all security guards and some employees were wearing masks. This didn’t help our spirits,” he said.
Simultaneously, some offices in Purva Summit IT Park, where the spouse of the aforementioned DSM employee works, were also evacuated. Panic soon spread to other buildings as well. An employee of the Arcesium in building
12C, which is located exactly opposite building
20, said that he and his colleagues were nervously watching people from the opposite building making their way out. “People working in building 20 often come to 12C for a walk after lunch since we have an open area. We are afraid that our surroundings could be contaminated,” he said.
Arcesium, however, chose to keep this office open and sent a detailed mail assuring its employees that the office would be cleaned with a “higher concentration of cleaning agents”.
Different companies responded to the situation differently, each chose a different approach and clearly, the lack of a standard procedure or preparedness to emergency visible. NCR, with offices in 12C and nearby 12B, asked all employees to leave immediately. It also advised them to not visit another office elsewhere in the city.
One employee from Hexagon, around a kilometre away from Mindspace, said that one of his colleagues had received a mail that an employee’s spouse was exhibiting symptoms of Coronavirus infection. “Members of that team have been asked to go home. We kept waiting for instructions for the rest of us,” he said.
Fear made its way as far as the Financial District in Nanakr-amguda. An employee of Capgemini said that their management, while not asking them to leave immediately, told them to work from home from Thursday.
“A lot of us don’t have official laptops, so they couldn’t be sent home immediately. We are being given permission to work from personal laptops. Apart from that, we are getting counselling sessions on hygiene and precautions,” he said.
At Deloitte, whose mega office is near Meenakshi Tech Park, employees were sent detailed mails listing out measures the company was taking against spread of Covid-19. One email listed out restricted locations from where none of its employees could travel to and from.
An employee added that a large party for employees, scheduled in a convention centre nearby, has also been cancelled. While Adobe send a reassuring email to all employees, folks working at HSBC remained calm and braved the day. People at Oracle were allowed to leave but no one was asked to go.
The panic having set, the fallout on the technology district and its various companies would be clearer tomorrow.