Taiwan’s Foxconn, the top assembler of Apple’s iPhones, issued a statement Sunday night in which it said the company has secured enough workers to meet “seasonal demand” at all major China factories. Foxconn said its recruitment goals have been reached “ahead of schedule at the plants” after the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
Kensaku Ihara for Nikkei Asian Review:
This signals progress from early March when Chairman Young Liu told investors that Chinese plants were operating at roughly 50% capacity of normal.
The company also stressed that it has instituted rigorous measures to prevent infection. A total of 55,000 workers received PCR coronavirus tests, and over 40,000 people underwent chest X-rays, according to Foxconn.
The company is expected to hit a peak production period after July to manufacture iPhones for release in the fall.
MacDailyNews Take: Good news, if the Chinese government is actually providing accurate coronavirus numbers regarding new cases, recoveries, and deaths. That’s a big “IF.” Given their past history in this and many, many other matters, significant doubt is warranted and independently-verified proof required before we’ll believe anything being excreted by the Chinese government. Hopefully, Foxconn iPhone factories never see a case of SARS-CoV-2.
More hopeful items out of Italy (showing the merits of social distancing):
++ Italy's 🇮🇹 number of registered Covid-19 cases grows by 8.1%. First time it is down to single digit.
Today's death toll is 601 down from 651 & 793 in the previous two days.
Italy went into lockdown two weeks ago. Scientists said it would take two weeks to see some results.
— Ferdinando Giugliano (@FerdiGiugliano) March 23, 2020
Today (March 23rd) the daily percentage growth of confirmed #COVID19 cases in Italy is 8.10%, from 59,138 to 63,927.
The absolute increase amounts to 4789 cases and is lower than the increase in the four previous days.
See the graph on daily % growth.#coronavirus pic.twitter.com/OK8JUU9kAN
— Riccardo Puglisi (@ricpuglisi) March 23, 2020
Hopefully, this good news would help AAPL stopping free-fall amid of Coronavirus.
Hopefully one sick commie will kill the whole lot.
Hopefully dd will be next.
This is highly irresponsible to send workers back to work so soon in China… and is a PRC make it look like everything is back to normal. Saying that… places like these are like little cities and I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually put a quarantine circle around the factory not allowing anyone to commmute to work. Only those living on site will be allowed in to work.
This has turned from Chinese government incompetence to a pure PR propaganda win for the PRC
China lost 64 million people under Mao Zedong, this nothing to them and Russia wasn’t far behind under uncle Joe. Not right just is.