Although Social Distancing Eased... Companies Maintain Strict In-House Quarantine Measures

Increase in Confirmed COVID-19 Cases Among Employees Leads to Work Disruptions

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Hyung-gil] Although the government has recently eased COVID-19 social distancing guidelines, companies are still maintaining a strong emergency alert posture. As the number of confirmed cases among employees increases, they are maintaining high-intensity internal quarantine measures, fearing that it could lead to work disruptions.

According to the business community on the 20th, Samsung Electronics, which has the largest number of employees among domestic companies, has recently reported hundreds of new confirmed cases daily.

As of the end of last year, Samsung Electronics had 113,485 domestic employees. Applying the recent one-week average domestic infection rate (784 per 100,000 people) for a simple calculation, about 890 confirmed cases occur daily.

Samsung Electronics is maintaining the high-intensity internal quarantine measures introduced last month, including banning face-to-face meetings and training, prohibiting company dinners, refraining from domestic business trips, and implementing department-specific remote work.

A company official stated, "Considering the recent scale of new confirmed cases, it does not seem like the atmosphere is right to ease internal quarantine guidelines immediately," adding, "Employees are being as cautious as possible to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks at the workplace."

LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group are maintaining a remote work ratio of over 50% as before. They are also applying internal guidelines such as restricting face-to-face meetings and training, and refraining from external business trips except for essential management reasons.

SK Hynix also announced that it is maintaining existing internal quarantine measures, including banning face-to-face meetings and company dinners, and prohibiting overseas business trips (with exceptions only for essential management reasons).

The quarantine authorities, after two adjustments in mid-last month and early this month that extended operating hours of multi-use facilities such as restaurants and cafes from 9 PM to 10 PM, and then to 11 PM by one hour each time, will implement a third easing measure starting on the 21st for two weeks, increasing the allowed number of private gatherings from 6 to 8 people.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.