No More iPhones, Foxconn Empoyees Instead Produce Medical Face Masks

As planned, employees working at Foxconn’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China may have continued their jobs on Feb 10^th if the company hasn’t told them not to return due to the coronavirus outbreak in China. Instead, they’re ordered to follow other instructions of the coronavirus prevention. As reported by Reuters, a Foxconn-owned subsidiary in Shenzhen has already converted some iPhone production lines to manufacture medical face masks for its workers. Both of the movements appear to be very useful when it comes to limiting the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

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The Shenzhen-based factory is one of three main iPhone manufacture lines in mainland China, along with a separate location in Zhengzhou, Henan and another in Shanghai’s outskirts, which is operated by Pegatron. In fact, there’s only a few of iPhone assembled in Shenzhen, so it remains unclear whether such a policy would extend to other facilities of Foxconn or not.

According to Reuters, the company has refit a number of iPhone production lines into ones that produce medical face masks. Initially, these masks will be used by hundreds of thousands of Foxconn employees, but the mass production of about two million masks per day is set to come soon by the end of the month.

Foxconn said in a statement to employees that everyone’s health and safety is the company’s first priority, which is also in accordance with the guidance from the Chinese government to combat coronavirus. Besides real-time updates, the company claims that work-related rights and employees’ interests will be ensured during that time.

As China has to face with the coronavirus outbreak, not only the tech industry but also many economy sectors out there must learn how to deal with the epidemic and revitalize as soon as possible.

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