Source: iStock/caoyu36

In the effort to combat the coronavirus outbreak and prepare for the possible escalation of events, major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has restricted travel to a few countries and devised a plan for four stages of the disease.

In a shared document, Coinbase - which has offices in the U.S., the UK, Ireland, and Japan - stated that the travel for its employees has been restricted to China, Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, and South Korea. As several employees have traveled to these regions recently, the company is currently working on a plan for their re-entry to the company, the exchange says.

While Coinbase believes that the risk of illness is low for their employees, "with a slightly elevated risk" to their Japan team, they call for employees in the impacted areas to begin their personal preparation in case the situation worsens and to take measures to protect themselves from the virus as much as possible.

On their part, the company came up with a four-tier escalation ladder for response to changes in the coronavirus epidemic, but they say they don't expect to see these negative outcomes in reality. The tiers go from 0 to 3, and a higher tier will be declared depending on "the number of community transmission events within a commuting radius of a Coinbase office." For now, all Coinbase offices are at tier 0, except for the Japan office, which is at tier 1.

Tier 0

Current situation.

Sanitation measures are improved, including office cleaning and providing necessities such as hand sanitizers; also, there's a continuous risk monitoring through a crisis management team.

Tier 1

Situation with more than 100 people infected who are not close relatives or living in the same house; within the commuting radius of a given Coinbase office.

Work from home is encouraged; in-office meetings, visits, and services are limited to essential personnel; office cleaning is more frequent; the company works on plans to move critical workflows to offices that are not impacted.

Tier 2

Situation with more than 1,000 people infected (as above).

That office is closed to non-essential personnel/activities/events; the critical workload movement plans to the least/non-impacted offices are executed. If needed, serving meals is stopped in the impacted office and a visitor health screening program installed.

Tier 3

Situation with more than 5,000 people infected with an increasingly upward trend.

The office is locked down entirely; all employees must work from home; all workload movement plans are executed, including potential relocation of essential personnel outside the danger area.

Coronavirus (COVID-19 type) has raised concerns across the world. It originated in China's Wuhan region and is spreading in a number of countries, with more than 81,000 people infected and over 2,700 fatalities worldwide, as well as over 30,000 recoveries.

A number of companies are already offering "contactless" business solutions, utilizing blockchain, so to limit the virus's ability to spread, while a number of leading Japanese firms, including the operators of two of the country’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges (GMO Coin and TaoTao) have already taken steps to have people working from their homes.

Learn more: Coronavirus Updates on Cryptonews.com