Dear Auxis Customer,
Since the beginning of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak, Auxis has been monitoring the situation closely. The outbreak has recently been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, and there have been confirmed cases within the United States and Costa Rica. While we are monitoring the broader situation closely, Auxis has decided to implement the appropriate protocols in accordance with our Business Continuity Plan. These plans include a Pandemic Contagious Response Plan and a BCP Action team that meets regularly during periods of elevated risk to manage and coordinate key elements of our plan. This note is a brief summary of the salient points in those plans so you have a sense of what we are doing to ensure customer safety, employee safety, and continuity of service.
Regarding customer safety, we have significantly increased the cleaning & disinfecting of high traffic areas, placed hand sanitizer in high traffic areas and are monitoring our staff closely for symptoms. We have found no affected employees and will continue to monitor daily and will restrict and reschedule any planned visits to the Costa Rica office as the situation may warrant.
Regarding employee safety, we have distributed prevention information, are monitoring staff for symptoms daily, and have eliminated non-essential travel and all foreign travel to high risk countries as designated by CDC and WHO advisories. If any employee displays symptoms or has been exposed to confirmed cases, he or she will immediately be asked to seek medical diagnosis and work from home (or simply stay home) until the symptoms pass or longer, per guidance from local health authorities. In cases of severe known exposure, we will require medical clearance from a doctor in order for the individual to return to work. We have also implemented steps to restrict visitor access to our facilities. These steps include encouraging remote meetings in lieu of in person visits, restricting visitors from foreign locations, and imposing screening and restriction for local visitors who have traveled to high risk locations.
Regarding continuity of service, we have action plans in place for internal employees and for our facilities in the event that we are have voluntary or mandated restricted access to our facility. Our plans include escalating options of Work From Home, Alternate Work Locations for key employees, and in extreme cases, travel of key associates out of the infected geography.
We have received questions about Auxis employees traveling to Asia & Europe (specifically China, Japan, South Korea, and Italy). Auxis does not routinely operate in those geographies and, as noted above, we have restricted employee travel to those regions until it is deemed safe by the CDC and WHO.
We will continue to monitor developments closely with information provided by the CDC, as well as information from our local healthcare partners. If you have additional questions or requests, please reach out to your Account Manager. Thank you again for being a valued Auxis customer. We will provide additional updates as events may warrant.
Regards,