Amazon, Google stop all employee travel over coronavirus

The effects of coronavirus are having larger and larger impacts on business, with tech giants Amazon and Google now pushing new restrictions on employee travel over coronavirus, or COVID-19.

Amazon has requested that its 798,000 employees stop all non-essential travel immediately, which includes both domestic and international travel. This move from Amazon comes after the company restricted travel to China in February with its employees, but now the restrictions apply globally, and domestically.

Moving over to everything giant Google, which has increased its employee travel restrictions to include Japan and South Korea -- a list that already banned travel to China, Iran, and two Italian regions: Lombardy and Veneto. A Google spokesperson said: "We can confirm that one employee from our Zurich office has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms. We have taken -- and will continue to take - all necessary precautionary measures, following the advice of public health officials, as we prioritize everyone's health and safety".