Image Credit: Pankaj Sharma/Gulf News Archives

Dubai: The UAE offices of a US based marketing and PR consultancy firm have been temporarily closed after an employee tested positive for coronavirus.

The staff member had recently returned from a trip to Europe, according to sources in the PR industry. The company has an office in Abu Dhabi’s twofour54 media hub as well as one in Dubai’s Jumeirah Lake Towers.

Speaking to Gulf News, a senior spokesperson of the company said: “We believe in transparency and proactivenes. This is a precautionary measure and we are going by the guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), we have decided to shut down the office, but all our employees will be working from home under the 14-day quarantine period and we will review the decision to reopen our offices post the mandatory quarantine period. However, we are open for business via remote conferencing and will conduct our operatons through the available software platforms. Once we are cleared we will resume work at the office.”

In the meantime, the health authorties are overseeing a deep cleansing and sanitisation procedure as per international protocols at both the offices. All the employees who were in primary and secondary contact with the Covid-19 positive individual will under go nasal and throat swab testing. The employees movements back to the UAE are being traced as per standard protocol and the health authorities are being meticulous about leaving no loopholes in this trace.