Coronavirus impacts Dayton firm
Stratacache has closed its operations in China until at least Feb. 17 in response to deadly outbreak.
The novel coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 80 people worldwide is having an impact on at least one Dayton-area company doing business in China.
In the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Dayton-based Stratacache has closed operations in China until at least Feb. 17.
The digital sign and technology company has more than 300 employees in China and 1,100 worldwide.
CEO Chris Riegel said so far this isn’t impacting his company’s revenue because everyone was off half of last week and all of this week for Chinese new year.
“Once we see how next week is shaping up we will have a better sense of the go forward, but if people can’t travel to get back to our factory, then it will start to have a real economic impact,” Riegel said.
The company’s plant is in Ningbo, about two hours south of Shanghai.
He said staff are currently evaluating all global business travel and upcoming trade show events — including two in Europe in the next three weeks — and may begin suspending all business travel and event participation until this is brought under control.
The Dayton company, which acquired the former downtown Kettering Tower in 2019, designs and builds digital signs, augmented and virtual reality products, sensors and much more in the arena of marketing and customer-facing technology.
U.S. stocks dropped amid concerns about the outbreak and
what the economic impact could mean.
The Financial Times reported that the manufacturing hub of Suzhou has postponed the return to work of millions of migrant laborers for up to a week. Suzhou is one of the world’s largest manufacturing hubs, where other local companies as well as big corporations have factories, such as iPhone contractor Foxconn, Johnson & Johnson and Samsung Electronics.
No coronovirus cases have been reported in Ohio to date. The risk to the American public from the virus remains low.
The outbreak of the virus, 2019-nCoV, started in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, in December.
2019-nCoV is part of a large family of coronaviruses, some of which cause illness in people and others that circulate among animals. Rarely, animal coronaviruses can evolve and infect people and then spread between people.
This happened with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2014, and now 2019-nCoV. These viruses may cause mild to severe respiratory illnesses with symptoms of fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
The Dayton Daily News reported on Sunday that while no cases have been reported in Ohio, health officials have the tools in place to respond to a potential outbreak.
Local health officials years ago formed a coalition within the nine-county region, and they have a plan in place to address any medical emergencies that may arise. The plan was put into action during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak and then again in 2019 after natural disasters such as the Memorial Day tornadoes and the Oregon District mass shooting in August.
Led by the Greater Dayton
Area Hospital Association, the coalition consists of 29 hospitals and health systems in the region, and stretches as far north as Auglaize County, east to Clark County and to Butler and Warren counties in the south.
Ohio Department of Health has also declared the virus an immediately reportable disease, taking a proactive step to ensure appropriate reporting of suspected cases, should the need arise in Ohio.
Classifying a disease as Class A means that confirmed or suspected cases of the virus must be reported immediately to the local health district where the person lives (or the local health district where the person is being evaluated if the person’s residence is unknown or not in Ohio).
‘Once we see how next week is shaping up we will have a better sense of the go forward, but if people can’t travel to get back to our factory, then it will start to have a real economic impact.’
Stratacache CEO Chris Riegel