Webasto halts travel to China after 2 employees in Germany contract coronavirus

MUNICH -- Two employees of German supplier Webasto have been infected with the coronavirus, the supplier said.

One of the employees worked at the supplier's headquarters in Stockdorf, near Munich, Germany, the company said in a news release on Tuesday. The second employee from China had been working in Stockdorf earlier this month.

"The two colleagues are doing well under the circumstances," Webasto CEO Holger Engelmann said in a statement.

Webasto said it has canceled all employee trips to China for at least the next two weeks.

Webasto makes heating, air conditioning and roof systems. It has 11 factories in China and its largest plant worldwide in Wuhan, which is at the center of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Germany-based Webasto employee had not visited China. He but came into contact with a Chinese colleague when the two employees took part in a training course at Webasto's Stockdorf offices.

Andreas Zapf, president of Bavaria's office for health and food safety, said on Tuesday that the German person infected was 33 year-old man who lived in the district of Landsberg about 31 miles west of Munich. He had come into contact with a female Chinese colleague on Jan 21.

The woman is from Shanghai but her parents, who are from the Wuhan region, had visited her a few days earlier, Zapf said. She had arrived in Germany on Jan. 19, appearing not to have any symptoms, but began to feel ill on her flight home on Jan. 23. She sought medical treatment after landing and tested positive for coronavirus.

When that information was relayed back to the German company, a male employee said he felt like he had flu over the weekend and was on Monday advised to get medical treatment, Zapf said.

The head doctor at the clinic where the man is being treated told a news conference the patient was awake and responsive and he did not think the man's life was at risk.

Martin Hoch, the head of an infectiology taskforce, said the man had been in close contact with at least 40 colleagues and family members, adding that number could rise.

Bavaria's health ministry said people who had been in contact with the man had been informed of possible symptoms, hygiene measures and transmission channel.

Webasto has given its 1,000 employees permission to work from home and has asked them to postpone face-to face appointments with customers outside the company.

German supplier Schaeffler, which employs 12,000 people in China and has a small office in Wuhan, has banned travel into and out of China for its employees until Feb. 15.

As the death toll in China rises from the spread of the flu-like virus, automakers are evacuating workers from the Wuhan area.

Wuhan is home to assembly plants for Dongfeng as well as several global automakers, including PSA Group, Renault, Nissan, Honda and General Motors.

PSA, which operates three plants in Wuhan with Dongfeng, is repatriating expatriate staff and their families from the Wuhan area.

Nissan plans to evacuate most of its expatriates and their family members from Wuhan using chartered planes dispatched by the Japanese government.

Renault is offering expatriates from its Wuhan plant the option to leave the country temporarily, a spokesman told the Financial Times

Honda said it will evacuate from Wuhan about 30 Japanese workers and families using a government charter aircraft.

To contain the new coronavirus, Chinese authorities have banned or limited travel and locked down 17 cities with a total of more than 50 million people.

Daimler, BMW, Toyota and Honda and their Chinese peers such as Dongfeng Motor and GAC Motor have donated cash, ranging from 5 million yuan ($720,460) to 26 million yuan to foundations set up to help residents in Hubei and Wuhan fight the disease.