Apple is deep-cleaning its China stores and restricting employee travel to protect against the coronavirus

• Apple is taking precautions to protect its workers against the spread of the coronavirus in mainland China.
• CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday the company has restricted employee travel to the country.
• It is also frequently deep-cleaning its Apple Stores and monitoring employees' temperatures.
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During Apple's fiscal first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Tim Cook talked about the measures the company is having to take to protect its employees from the outbreak of coronavirus.

At last count, Chinese officials confirmed 6,000 domestic cases of the virus with a death toll of 132. The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus is thought to have originated, is currently on lockdown.

Cook told analysts that Apple has limited employee travel to "business-critical situations" in China as of last week. Apple is not the only tech company to take this precaution since Facebook announced yesterday it has suspended all non-essential employee travel.

Unlike Facebook, Apple is reliant on its supply chain, the majority of which is in China. Cook said that supplier factories outside of Wuhan have had their re-openings following the Lunar New Year holiday delayed by ten days.

The supply chain isn't the only part of Apple's business affected by the virus. Cook added Apple has closed one of its stores, and many other stores are operating with shortened opening hours. "We're taking additional precautions and frequently deep-cleaning our stores as well as conducting temperature checks for employees," Cook said.

He added that the outbreak has affected sales in China. "While our sales within the Wuhan area itself are small, retail traffic has also been impacted outside of this area across the country in the last few days," he said.

During the call, Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri said Apple has made allowances to mitigate the cost of the virus outbreak.

The company gave a revenue forecast of $63 billion to $67 billion, with Maestri saying the "wider-than-usual" $4 billion spread was due to uncertainty thrown up by the outbreak (although as Business Insider's Troy Wolverton reports, $4 billion is not an unusual revenue spread for Apple to give).

"First and foremost, our thoughts are with all of those that are affected across the region," said Cook, adding that Apple is donating to groups who are fighting the disease. He did not say how exactly how much money the company has donated.