British banking giant HSBC has closed down some branches as well as its main office in Hong Kong after many of the employees tested positive for Covid-19, Bloomberg has reported.
In a statement to the publication, the bank said: “This is a precautionary measure to safeguard the health and safety of the bank’s employees and customers, while balancing the need to ensure normal banking services to the community.”
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The lender closed the BL1, L3, L5 and L6 floors at its main building in the Central district, which offers branch services.
Furthermore, the London-based bank also shuttered five bank branches in Tuen Mun and Mei Foo.
Commercial areas on Hong Kong Island were also shut in a bid to contain the infection.
HSBC also mandated its staff at the concerned branches to undergo virus tests, the Bloomberg report added.
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By GlobalDataHSBC, which is Hong Kong’s biggest bank, operates almost 100 branches in the financial hub.
Hong Kong is battling the worst pandemic wave since the outbreak a couple of years ago. It is facing severe crunch of hospital beds to treat more than 5,000 new cases per day.
In 2020, a Reuters report said that HSBC was resuming its initial plans to cut 35,000 jobs that it had postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The redundancies were part of the bank’s broader restructuring strategy to trim $4.5bn in costs.
In March, the bank decided to postpone the job cuts as it did not want to push staff out amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
