A contractor working at Shell's Pulau Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore has contracted the new coronavirus, the company said on Friday, as the city-state reported its biggest jump in new cases so far.
The Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore houses Shell's biggest wholly-owned refinery.
The company said earlier it had sent some staff home from its main office at Metropolis in western Singapore after discovering another employee had been in contact with a carrier.
The company said its operations at both locations had been unaffected by the incidents. The contractor working at the Bukom site tested positive for the fast-spreading coronavirus now labeled Covid-19 on Thursday, according to the Shell statement on Friday.
Singapore's Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the 30-year old Singaporean is a relative of a 62-year old employee at Singapore's biggest bank, DBS Group Holdings, and first reported symptoms on Jan. 30.
The bank had asked 300 staff to leave its head office in the financial district on Wednesday and work from home as a precautionary measure after an employee tested positive for coronavirus.
A Shell spokeswoman said that as a precautionary measure, personnel who shared the same work area as the contractor were placed on leave of absence when Shell received an alert on a suspected case.
"We have thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the worker's work area and common areas in accordance with guidelines," she told Reuters.
She added that Shell had also implemented precautionary measures as advised by the Singapore Health ministry including temperature screening at Pulau Bukom and other Shell Singapore sites and work locations.
The Pulau Bukom manufacturing site is an integrated refinery and chemicals site and can process up to 500,000 barrels per day of oil. Singapore on Friday reported 9 new cases of the virus, its biggest increase to date and bringing the total to 67. The city-state has one of the highest tallies of the disease outside China.
(Reporting by John Geddie and Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Mark Potter, and Frances Kerry)
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