Panic grips Mindspace Hyderabad after an employee tests positive for coronavirus
Panic spread across Mindspace’s many buildings in Hyderabad Wednesday morning when a company in Building 20 announced that one of its employees had tested positive for coronavirus.
DSM, a company with an office on the ninth floor of the building, sent out a mail to all its employees, announcing this news and asking them to leave the office and work from home. A screenshot of this mail went viral on Twitter and was shared widely on WhatsApp as well.
"Within an hour, employees of all companies in the building had learnt of the development. An employee of Yash Technologies, which has offices on the sixth and tenth floors, said, "As soon as the news broke, we were asked to leave the office and go home immediately.”
An employee from Cognizant, which has an office in the same building, at around 1 PM, said, “So far, we have received no information from the company officially. All of us are requesting our managers to let us go home. There is a lot of anxiety in the air. When we came in the morning, the security guards and some employees were wearing masks. This sight does not help.”
Soon enough, the fear spread across other buildings as well. Employees of Building 12C were also afraid, since they are located in exactly the opposite Building 20. The Yash Technologies employee said, “We visit that building often. After our lunch, we go there since it has an open area where we can walk. I am sure that building will also have to be evacuated and fumigated.”
NCR, another company with an office in 12C nearby 12B, also asked its employees to go home. The mail also asked its employees from Mindspace to not visit its other office in Western Aqua, probably as a precautionary measure.
Meanwhile, even outside Mindspace, IT employees remained anxious. One employee from a software company just a kilometre away from Mindspace, said one of his colleagues had received a mail that an employee’s spouse was exhibiting symptoms of coronavirus infection. “Members of that team have been asked to go home. We are awaiting instructions for the rest of us soon,” he said.
