Hyderabad: Several techies in Hyderabad’s IT hub were asked to vacate offices during their shift on Wednesday after a company claimed one of its employees had tested positive for coronavirus.
Panic-stricken employees at Building 20 of Mindspace, a tech park located in Madhapur, were asked to work from home until further notice. The building with 14 floors has several software companies.
The emails sent to the employees by the companies read that the entire building would be cleansed and hence, the premises would remain shut.
In some of the mails accessed by News18, the company had also asked employees to use stairs instead of elevators while leaving office and not touch any objects in office premises.
“We were told that an employee of a company in our building working on the ninth floor has tested positive for coronavirus. As a result, all the directors have collectively taken a decision to get the building evacuated. We have also sent precautionary measures to employees on what to do further,” an HR executive from another company on the same floor told News18.
It is, however, still unclear if this is a new case or one of the existing ones.
According to the latest update from the Telangana government, test results of two samples are awaited. The samples have been sent to NIV, Pune, for testing. One of them has a travel history to Italy, while the second person is a “contact” case of the first positive case found.
These two samples sent to Pune laboratory are part of the 47 others who were tested in Hyderabad. Of these, 45 tested negative for the virus.
The 24-year-old Hyderabad techie who first tested positive for coronavirus was immediately isolated at the state-run Gandhi hospital and his condition is said to be stable.
The massive tech park, spread over a hundred acres, hosts about 21 buildings with each having 10 floors at least and is home to several software firms. However, the employees in other buildings continued to work from their offices.
The situation created panic among the employees and also led to traffic, with thousands of them rushing to exit. A large number of people were seen wearing masks and covering their faces while leaving the premises.
Meanwhile, people in other buildings are waiting for an update from their respective firms over the matter.
“I work in building 12 and a friend of mine who works in building 20 told me about what happened. It is obviously scary that someone in the premises has tested positive. At present, there is a lot of chaos and panic among the employees,” a techie told News18, on condition of anonymity.
Comments
0 comment