Google offers user location data to health officials. The initiative uses a portion of the information that the search giant has collected on users, including through Google Maps, to create reports on the degree to which locales are abiding by social-distancing measures. (WSJ)
Facebook too. The company is providing mobile location data to experts as part of daily reports on social distancing in certain U.S. cities and dates. (Reuters)
Amazon.com fills 80,000 jobs in the span of a few weeks. The tech giant also announced a raft of worker-protection measures, including plans to check employees’ temperatures at its facilities in the U.S. and Europe. Amazon warehouse workers and other hourly employees have called on the company to do more to protect them as the coronavirus has spread. Employees in at least 15 warehouses in the U.S. have tested positive for Covid-19 or entered quarantine because of symptoms. (WSJ)
Biotech pioneer Amgen joins hunt for coronavirus drug. The company, a pioneer of biotechnology, is best known for its drugs for cancer, with other products targeting high cholesterol, kidney disease and migraines. (WSJ)
Companies begin to step up, with help from 3-D printing. Multinational companies are reprogramming their cutting-edge 3-D printers to tackle shortages of critical medical equipment caused by the coronavirus outbreak, WSJ’s Daniel Michaels and Asa Fitch report.
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HP is using printer farms in the U.S. and Spain to make hospital equipment such as face-mask adjusters and face shields. HP enlisted help from customers with idle printers, such as dental-mold printing firms.
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Siemens AG has tapped its global network of 3-D printing customers, including car makers, to help make equipment. It also has put more than 100 of its own printers in the U.S. and Europe to work.
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GE and Boeing are printing face masks.
Hackers linked to Iran target WHO. The hackers attempted to infiltrate the personal email accounts belonging to employees at the World Health Organization, the organization at the center of the effort to contain the coronavirus. (Reuters)
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