Square Enix have announced one of their staff at their Tokyo HQ has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The news comes via GameBiz.jp (via SiliconEra), stating the Square Enix made the announcement on April 9th. The employee in question is currently undergoing medical treatment at home, under the guidance of a doctor.
Following the instructions of the Japanese Health Center, other employees who were in close contact with the infected employee have been told to work from home. Their work places have also been disinfected, and reviewing where those employees had been.
While Square Enix had reportedly been taking measures from February 19th to combat the coronavirus; including remote working, staggering when employees arrived to work, banning international travel, enforcing more hand washing, gargling, wearing masks, and more.
From April 8th and until May 6th, all employees were (and will continue to) work from home via remote working. SiliconEra also reports a member of Capcom in Osaka also contracted the virus.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic (also known as COVID-19 officially, or Chinese Flu to others) has affected many worldwide, from businesses to public gatherings and events. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. This includes the postponement of GDC, and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, along with the cancellation of E3 2020 (including digital events), and Comiket 98.
We also recently reported on Japanese ratings board CERO suspending operations during the state of emergency in Japan.
Square Enix had also tried their best to work around the virus. While they initially announced that some may not get Final Fantasy VII Remake on release day, they later stated some would get the game “much earlier“ in Europe and Australia.
The Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering are mapping the virus’ spread [1, 2]. As of this time of writing, there have been over 1.496 million total confirmed cases worldwide, and over 1.069 million active cases. There have been over 89,000 deaths, however over 336,000 people have made a “total recovery.”
Japan has had a total of 4,667 cases (3,941 active cases), 94 deaths, and 632 recoveries.
Image: Wikipedia
