Covid-19

How ZAMA fights coronavirus

2020-02-28

We have heard about the detection of a new corona virus in the beginning of this year, but we did not anticipate that the virus will spread from Wuhan, affecting people all over China and even the whole world. By February 26, 2020, there are 78,190 people in China are infected by the new corona virus, of which 65,187 are from Hubei province (1.1 infection cases per thousand citizens), while Guangdong (where ZAMA factory is located) is the second most infected province in China after Hubei, with 1,347 infection cases / 11.92 infection cases per million citizens reported (62 of them in Huizhou, which equals 13 cases per million citizens). The good news is, as of today ZAMA has no single employee, who is sick with corona virus.

The virus spread very fast in late January because of the Spring Festival travel rush (also known as "the largest annual human migration in the world "). Chinese government extended the Spring Festival holiday this year to avoid cross infection among people on return trip.

As a company with a high sense of social responsibility, ZAMA always puts the health and safety of its employees first. Since the outbreak, ZAMA management has attached great attention to the development of the virus, and established a special working team for the prevention and control of the virus at ZAMA plant. In order to ensure health and safety of ZAMA employees, the working team did a lot of preparations before work resumption, such as

Ø Collecting travel information and physical condition of each ZAMA employee;

Ø Publishing online training materials and test against the virus (all employees have to 100% pass the online tests before returning to work);

Ø Arranging dormitories and shuttle buses for production workers;

Ø Preparing protective materials such as masks and disinfectants;

Ø Sterilizing the plant including workshops, offices, canteens and other areas;

Ø Communicating with local government on epidemic management plans, etc.

The outbreak of virus caused shortages of protective materials in China. It took a lot of efforts for the working team to purchase enough protective materials for work resumption. And we have to thank colleagues of other ZAMA locations and STIHL purchasing for their supports during the procurement process.

On February 15, with the approval of local government, ZAMA organized the first batch of 200+ workers return to work. ZAMA adopted the strictest virus-prevention management system to avoid infection of ZAMA employees. The company arranges at least 3 times body temperature measurement for all workers every day. Not only ZAMA employees, all visitors also need to have their body temperature measured before entering ZAMA plant. ZAMA provides new masks for all employees every working day, and the employees have to wear masks the whole time during commuting and working. The facilities in ZAMA plant are disinfected at a daily base.

Besides from that, ZAMA implemented special measures for staff canteen. The canteen only provides boxed meal during the special period, and all staffs need to order their foods one day in advance, space between each seat is increased to one meter and all seats are separated by baffles, dining time is strictly controlled by group and disinfections are applied before and after each meal.

For office workers, ZAMA extended home office since February 10 to avoid infection risks during commute. Flexibility is a big benefit for home office, while consistency and communication sometimes may be challenging for people work from home. Due to bad internet connection, “Can you hear me?” and “I could not hear you well, can you please repeat that again?” are the most frequently asked questions during video conferences I have participated. Fortunately, as the situation in China is getting better, office workers can also get back to work from this week (CW9). By February 26, there are 750 production and office workers in ZAMA Huizhou have resumed work.