SpaceX reportedly quarantines a dozen employees after 2 workers test positive for COVID-19

• SpaceX has sent over a dozen employees home after an employee and a medic tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a company email seen by the Telegraph.
• SpaceX claimed the risk of the employee having spread the virus is "very low" as they were only on-site for one day last Monday.
• It asked anyone who had had contact with the employee to go home and quarantine for 14 days, and is performing a "video review" of the person's movements while they were in the office. The medic had contact with 12 people, who have been sent home.
• SpaceX has remained open despite California's "shelter in place" order, which bans non-essential businesses from opening.
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SpaceX has confirmed two cases of COVID-19 among its staff and sent at least a dozen home, The Telegraph reports.

According to a staff email sent on Monday and seen by The Telegraph, an employee and a medic at SpaceX's Hawthorne, California premises have the virus.

The employee had tested positive after returning from traveling abroad, and SpaceX claimed in its email that the risk of them having spread the virus to other employees was "very low" and "no greater than going to the grocery store" because the person had only been on-site for one day, last Monday.

The company asked anyone who'd come into contact with that employee that day to go home and self-isolate for 14 days, and added it was doing a "video review" of the employee's movements to see if anyone else might have come into contact with them.

The medic had "close contact" with 12 employees, all of whom have been sent home, the email said. SpaceX was not immediately available for comment on the report when contacted by Business Insider.

SpaceX has come under scrutiny for remaining open during California's "shelter in place" order, which bans non-essential businesses from staying open.

CEO Elon Musk has also sent out mixed messages about the virus.

He has repeatedly claimed the coronavirus crisis has been overblown, saying towards the beginning of the global outbreak that the "coronavirus panic is dumb."

More recently Musk has started donating medical masks and ventilators to help fight the virus, and has promised that Tesla and SpaceX will manufacture ventilators, although he couched this by downplaying the severity of the outbreak, doubting whether hospitals will experience ventilator shortages.

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