Read the email from Cisco alerting workers that an employee at its Silicon Valley headquarters came in contact with someone who has the coronavirus disease

• Cisco is warning its employees that a worker at its Silicon Valley headquarters was in "close contact" with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, the coronavirus disease.
• Read the email Cisco sent to employees about the exposure and its next steps below.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Cisco has alerted its workforce that one of its employees was exposed to someone with a confirmed case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The employee did not have symptoms and has not been diagnosed with the disease, according to an internal email seen by Business Insider.

This employee works out of Cisco's massive Silicon Valley headquarters, which spans San Jose and the neighboring town of Milpitas - specifically, in Building 24 on the campus. Cisco has about 39,000 full-time employees in the United States, many of them based in and around its headquarters.

Meanwhile, Cisco's videoconferencing unit, WebEx, is trying to help companies cope with their own workforces who may be working at home en masse. Its WebEx unit is offering free 30-day licenses to use the videochat and conferencing tool.

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Here's the email sent on Friday from Fran Katsoudas, Chief People Officer:

Team,

The outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) in California is top of mind for us all, and we appreciate how concerning it can be to hear there are cases so close to home.

Late last night we were alerted to a situation where a Cisco employee has recently been in close contact with someone with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. This employee's place of work is SJC Building 24.

While our employee is not displaying any symptoms, your safety, and that of our customers and partners, is our priority. Later today, we will send an email to all employees globally to update you further on the Coronavirus situation and our recommendations.

To help guide you and answer your most pressing questions, we are organizing a live update and Q&A session with our Corporate Medical Directors at 1pm PT that you can join remotely. An invitation will follow shortly.

Please refer to Chuck's message to all staff from earlier this week on how as a company we are responding to this situation, and continue to check the Pandemic Planning employee community regularly for updates. It is important that we all observe this guidance, which is in place to help keep us all safe.

Fran

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