(Reuters) – Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) said Thursday that an employee has tested positive for COVID-19 at its Kokomo, Indiana transmission plant, but the location will remain open.
The Italian-American automaker said the company placed the employee and his immediate co-workers and others he may have come into direct contact with in home quarantine. The automaker said it is “deploying additional sanitization measures across the entire facility, re-timing break times to avoid crowding and deploying social spacing.”
Fiat Chrysler is canceling all in-person meetings unless “business critical” and conducted meetings through video conferencing technologies.
Automakers also have canceled non-essential travel.
Ford Motor Co (F.N) said its plants in North America remain unaffected. General Motors Co (GM.N) spokesman Jim Cain said the Detroit automaker has not had any cases of the coronavirus in its North American plants yet, citing such measures as reduced travel and restricted entry to plants as helping.
How the No. 1 U.S. automaker would respond to a positive test would depend on the situation, he added.
“You do plan to operate with a certain amount of absenteeism, but every facility has a different operating plan,” he said.
Reporting by David Shepardson and Ben Klayman, Editing by Franklin Paul and Chizu Nomiyama