Concern over the coronavirus has quickly become a priority for San Diego companies, which manage thousands of workers who could be at risk of contracting the virus.
From increasing access to hand sanitizers to imposing travel restrictions, San Diego County businesses appear to be taking a cautious approach. Many of the companies that responded to inquiries said they are closely following guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
With employees and customers in mind, Barona Casino is adding more disinfectant stations and doubling up on its cleaning protocols.
Troy Simpson, Barona’s assistant general manager, said the casino already has 70 Purell hand-cleaning stations on the casino floor and has ordered an additional 30 to be installed by next week. The casino will also have employees distributing cleansing wipes throughout the floor and will increase the frequency of deep cleaning all touchpoints, such as door handles, slot machines, table-game rims and escalators.
“Barona also has a ‘triple-stage’ air filtration system that includes ultraviolet lights that refresh and disinfect the air on a continual basis,” Simpson wrote in an email.
Petco, which counts 1,200 employees in San Diego and 26,000 workers company-wide, has temporarily restricted all international and non-essential air and rail travel, “out of an abundance of caution.”
In an email, the company said it also was making sure sufficient hygiene and sanitation supplies are available at all Petco stores, distribution centers and other sites.
Qualcomm, the San Diego-based wireless technology firm, said Thursday evening it is restricting all visitors who have “traveled to, from or within” China, South Korea, Italy or Iran, or have been in with anyone who has traveled to those areas within the past 14 days. The restrictions also apply to anyone who has been in with those diagnosed with the virus.
In addition, stockholders attending Qualcomm’s annual meeting next Tuesday will be required to complete a questionnaire regarding the restrictions. The company said it will not display any products or serve food or beverages at the meeting.
Sempra Energy, the Fortune 500 company that is the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric, has taken a number of precautions, including “limiting non-essential business travel, increasing the frequency of daily facility sanitization, and communicating to employees proper hygiene protocols,” the company said in an email.
Sempra also has subsidiaries in Mexico and Texas. The company recently opened an office in Houston with about 200 employees.
Houston is the site one of largest annual energy conferences in the world. Named for conference co-founder Cambridge Energy Research Associates, CERA Week brings together more than 5,500 attendees from more than 80 countries, but was canceled earlier this week.
David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at UC San Diego, was scheduled to speak at the conference.
“It’s the most important energy conference of the year,” Victor said. “It has senior leadership from all the major companies, many of the governments and academics who are all there in one place. So if there had been just one infected person in that tight environment, then everybody when they got home would have faced quarantine. It could have had massive consequences in the industry, so I completely understand why they canceled it.”
In Washington state, where the number of confirmed coronavirus cases increased to 70 on Thursday, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon are encouraging employees in the Seattle area to work from home. Other firms, including Apple, IBM and Chase, have turned to online meetings through Skype and other outlets to interact with clients.
But some businesses don’t have those kind of options. Restaurants, for example, must deal face to face with their customers.
“We’re serving the entire community — all ages, all types and not everyone out there has the same level of personal hygiene and concern for sanitation, and we have to deal with that on an ongoing basis,” said Stephen Zolezzi, president of the Food & Beverage Association San Diego County. “And that has a lot to do with the processes we have in place of making sure our facilities are sanitized on a regular basis and we’re taking all precautions necessary … We’re not going to run around with masks on.”
Mark Morton, CEO of the 14 restaurants that make up the Brigantine group, said since “food-borne illness in general could be such an issue in restaurants and we’ve been so adamant about staying safe, we’re just really doubling down on our procedures that are already in place.”
David Cohn, founder of the Cohn Restaurant Group that includes 22 eateries in the San Diego area, said his company is maintaining the safety and sanitation policies “we have always had in place and continuing to reinforce the fact that people cannot work when they are sick.”
Cohn said restaurants in his group have not experienced a drop in foot traffic.
“We are certainly concerned, but we have not felt it at this point,” he said.
The city of San Diego, one of the county’s largest employers, said it was monitoring the spread of the virus.
“As a preventative measure, the city continues to provide employees and the public access to hand sanitizer stations in various locations, with more expected in the coming weeks,” it said in a statement.
Some companies in the San Diego area did not respond to inquiries about the precautions they are taking, perhaps concerned about associating themselves in any way with the virus.
“It is a challenge, and at the moment (the extent of the virus) is an unknown,” said James Hamilton, economics professor at the University of San Diego. “I think this is unique. Some people talk about (the SARS epidemic centered in China in 2003) as a case study in this, but I think this is very different. The world was not as globalized then, it was not as serious a disease as this one is, so I don’t think we really have a very good precedent for what this can mean.”