Coronavirus: Tracking how corporations and events are dealing with the outbreak

This article will be continually updated with the latest company policies, event cancellations and school closures related to the COVID-19 situation. Last updated 9:30 a.m. PT Wednesday, April 1.

The COVID-19 outbreak has brought normal life to a standstill as cities shut down, businesses send workers home and consumers stockpile supplies.

Businesses of all sizes are still calibrating their responses to the outbreak, making decisions on a case-by-case basis of whether to cancel events or restrict non-mandatory business travel as more information comes to light. Their decisions could have global implications, impacting employees, customers and markets. More importantly, smaller companies will be watching the corporate behemoths for best practices and policies to enact at their own businesses.

Here's what we know so far on how the virus is impacting the corporate world—this is a growing list so be sure to check back for updates. Below you'll find corporate policies, conference cancellations, cultural and sporting cancellations or movements, business travel restrictions, major school closures, protocols at restaurants and retailers and resources.

For the latest health updates from the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control, click here.

Corporate Policies:

• Google has ordered all of its North American employees to work from home, in addition to workers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
• JP Morgan is closing 20% of its branches.
• Volkswagen and Airbus are shutting down their European factories.
• More than 450 CEOs and business executives signed an open letter calling for further action to stop the spread of the virus and encouraged workers and consumers to stay home.
• Fiat Chrysler is halting production for two weeks.
• Video game company Electronic Arts is asking all employees to work from home.
• Netflix is pausing scripted TV and film productions in the U.S. and Canada for two weeks.
• Disney has halted temporarily halted production of some of its live-action films.
• GM and Ford are requiring most of their white-collar workers to work from home.
• AT&T is advising all 245,000 employees to work from home.
• CME Group has closed its Chicago trading floor.
• Goldman Sachs is instituting new policies to lower the number of people in its offices at any one point in time, including mandating some teams work from home and others rotate offices. See the full memo and changes here.
• Slack is mandating its 2,000 employees work remotely.
• Twitter is now requiring all employees worldwide to work from home.
• Amazon warehouse workers can now take an unlimited number of sick days this month, but only those who test positive for the coronavirus will be entitled to sick pay.
• JP Morgan is instituting a staggered work-from-home scenario for its New York and New Jersey-based employees. This does not apply to traders and branch workers.
• Carnival's Princess Cruises is suspending all operations for 60 days.
• EY is moving its student recruitment online.
• DoorDash and Instacart are offering their workers who are diagnosed with coronavirus two weeks of paid sick leave.
• Uber and Lyft are giving drivers who are diagnosed with the virus two weeks of paid sick leave.
• Walmart has issued three possible scenarios for emergency leave its retail employees. 1. Workers can use their allocated if they do not feel well or are "uncomfortable" coming in and the company's attendance policy will not be enforced until April. 2. Workers at any store or distribution center that is placed under quarantine will receive up to two weeks of pay. 3. If a worker is diagnosed with the virus, they will receive up to two weeks of pay.
• Trader Joe's has altered its leave policy to encourage workers to stay home if they're sick, allowing employees to get reimbursed for the sick days.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking its DC workers to work from home.
• Square is strongly encouraging its employees to work from home.
• Facebook is no longer allowing visitors and requiring most job interviews to be conducted by video conferencing. UPDATE: The company has closed its Seattle office until March 9 and is asking all of its Bay Area employees to work remotely. All of the company's regional events in the Bay Area have been canceled.
• Stripe instituted a work-from-home policy and suspended global office visits.
• Microsoft is encouraging employees who can work from home to do so until March 25.
• LinkedIn (at which your friendly editor works) has ordered all employees in North America to work from home and postpone non-essential business travel.
• Amazon has also halted all in-person interviews, moving them to video calls, and is restricting travel for its employees. UPDATE: Amazon is now asking all employees to work remotely until March 31.
• Salesforce is asking its Washington employees to work from home until the end of March.
• Box is now asking its employees to work from home.
• Apple is asking all of its global employees to work remotely.
• MikMak, an ecommerce marketing platform, is mandating all employees work from home. The company has released a detailed memo on how workers will be impacted and what resources its made available.

Business Travel:

• The major U.S. airlines are considering grounding most domestic flights as travel has come to a halt.
• The State Department is advising Americans avoid all international travel and those who are currently abroad come back to the U.S.
• American Airlines is cutting international capacity by 75% between March 16 and May 6.
• Delta Airlines is cutting capacity by 40% in response to the. decline in bookings. CEO Ed Bastion is forgoing his salary for the remainder of the year.
• Companies are restricting non-mandatory business travel, dealing a blow to the airline industry. United Airlines is cutting its international schedule in April by 20% and its domestic travel by 10% in response.
• Salesforce is prohibiting cross-border travel.
• Twitter, Amazon, Square, L'Oreal, Ford and JP Morgan are all restricting global and non-essential travel.

Conference Cancellations:

• Viacom's VidCon conference that was slated for June has been canceled.
• Apple's annual developers conference WWDC is moving to online only.
• E3, the world's largest gaming convention scheduled for June, has been canceled.
• The New York Auto Show, a 12-day conference slated for April, has been postponed for the first time since WWII. It's now expected to take place in August.
• Nido2020, a scientific meeting to discuss the coronavirus, has been canceled.
• Google i/o, the tech company's flagship developer conference, is canceled and its San Francisco-based Cloud Next will a digital-only event.
• Trade shows like the Inspired Home Show in Chicago and Natural Products Expo West have also been called off.
• Adobe is hosting its yearly summit online only.
• Amazon, Intel, Cisco and Salesforce have pulled out of HIMSS, a media IT trade show taking place in Orlando.
• Lesbians Who Tech has postponed its summit until August.
• Microsoft has canceled its five-day MVP Summit.
• The TED conference in Vancouver will either be canceled or made into a digital-only event. IBM's THINK conference in San Francisco is also now online only.
• Shopify canceled Shopify Unite and has postponed its international conference Shopify Pursuit.
• The ACHE has canceled its 2020 Congress on Healthcare Leadership.
• The 2020 Milken conference has been postponed to July.
• The ASEAN Summit in Las Vegas, which President Trump was expected to attend, has been postpone.
• The Game Developers Conference has been postponed.
• Amnesty International canceled its annual conference.

Event/Sport/Cultural Cancellations

• UPDATE: The Wimbledon tennis tournament has been canceled.
• The Japan 2020 Olympics have been postponed until 2021.
• Ski resorts across the country are shutting down, including major resorts in Colorado, Lake Tahoe and Utah.
• The Ellen DeGeneres Show has shut down production.
• Louisiana is postponing its primaries until June 20.
• NASCAR races will continue but without fans.
• The Masters golf tournament has been postponed.
• Late-night shows with Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert are suspending production until at least March 30.
• Disneyland is closing beginning Saturday, March 14. The company says it will continue to pay all cast members.
• The NCAA March Madness tournament is canceled.
• The U.S. Capital, Senate and House office buildings are closed to the public and the White House has suspended all tours.
• The MLB has suspended all operations, including spring training.
• New York has banned gatherings of 500 people or more, which will go into effect on Friday. Broadway shows, however, are all being shut down immediately.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is closing its buildings starting this Friday, March 13.
• The NHL has suspended the rest of the season.
• Major League Soccer has suspended all games for the next 30 days.
• The PGA Tour won't allow fans for the foreseeable future.
• Major television networks are no longer allowing live audiences at show tapings.
• The NBA suspended its season after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for the virus.
• The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, one of the largest in the world, has been canceled.
• The Tucson Book Festival, which typically draws in 100,000 people, has been canceled.
• Tennis tournament BNP Paribas Open has been canceled.
• Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade has been canceled. New York City has also canceled its parade, which has historically been the largest in the world.
• SXSW—Austin's annual film, music and tech bonanza—has been canceled. Officials made the announcement in a press conference Friday afternoon. The move came after an online petition with more than 50,000 signatures circulated calling for it to be canceled. Multiple companies and individuals had already pulled out of the event, including Twitter, Facebook, Mashable, Intel, Amazon, Netflix, WarnerMedia and TikTok.
• The Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals scheduled to take place in April have been postponed until October.
• San Francisco has banned gatherings of 1,000 people or more for the following two weeks, which will include Golden State Warrior games.

Major university and school closures

• UPDATE: Many colleges are cancelling or postponing graduation ceremonies, including USC and UCLA in California, Butler University in Indiana, the University of Colorado and Harvard.
• Harvard, Stanford and Columbia law schools are all dropping grades, opting for a pass or fail option instead.
• States closing all public schools include Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
• Education Week has an amazing list of all school closures across the country. To see if your district is impacted, see the list here.
• Houston is canceling classes at most schools. See a full list here.
• San Francisco is closing all schools for three weeks. See a full list of school and university closures in the Bay Area here.
• Illinois universities are moving online, including Northwestern and the University of Illinois system. See a full list here.
• The University of California system is increasingly moving classes online, including University of Berkeley, UCLA and University of Southern California.
• Stanford University is canceling all in-person classes, moving all instruction to online for the final two weeks of the winter quarter.
• Yale is moving all classes online until April 5.
• Columbia University canceled Monday and Tuesday classes this week with virtual-only courses expected to begin on Wednesday.
• Princeton, University of Florida, Ohio State University, Cornell and Syracuse University have closed their campus, moving all classes online.
• Harvard is telling students not to return after spring break and is looking to transition all classes to online by March 23.
• NYU is moving all classes to online only starting Wednesday, March 11.

Retail Protocols:

• The Dollar Store is establishing hours for only elderly customers to come and shop in an effort to protect the most vulnerable.
• L Brands, which includes Victoria's Secret, are closing all stores in the U.S. and Canada until March 29.
• Wynn and MGM have shut down their Las Vegas hotels and casinos.
• Peloton is closing all of its retail stores and streaming classes online.
• Urban Outfitters is closing all global stores.
• Nike is closing all of its U.S. stores and select global ones.
• AMC and Regal Cinemas are capping ticket availability to 50% of total seats to encourage social distancing.
• Patagonia is closing all of its stores and halting production.
• Apple has closed all of its stores outside of China.
• Starbucks is evaluating moving some stores to drive-thru only or enabling mobile-order only. See full statement here. UPDATE: The coffee giant is giving employees 20 free therapy sessions.

Resources:

• Hootsuite is giving small businesses and nonprofits free access to its professional social media management tool.
• Facebook is offering $100 million in grants to small businesses.
• Comcast, PG&E, Verizon and other internet, utility and phone providers are waiving late billing fees and promising not to cut service to those unable to pay.
• Zoom is giving its video-conferencing tool away for free to K-12 schools in the United States, Italy and Japan.
• Cisco is offering free 90-day business licenses of its video conferencing tool Webex.
• Existing G-Suite customers can get free access to Google's Hangout Meet video tool through July 1.
• Microsoft is giving global businesses a six-month free trial of the business version of Teams, its collaboration software. (Editor's note: Microsoft is LinkedIn's parent company.)
• The Wall Street Journal has a handy list of tech gadgets to help you work from home.
• The New York Times has a detailed and constantly updated map of confirmed cases across the U.S.
• Amazon is giving out $5 million to small businesses near its Seattle headquarters in the form of cash grants to firms with fewer than 50 employees or less than $7 million in annual revenue.
• CVS is offering free pharmacy deliveries and Aetna is waiving early refill limits on 30-day maintenance prescriptions.