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Stocks took another hit today following 12 hours in which the coronavirus emergency led to another high-profile tech event cancellation and prompted Google LLC to call on all its North American employees to stay at home.

Also today, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic in a move that could further rattle investors.

Google LLC’s new policy that North American employees should work from home if their roles allow applies through April 10. The move, announced Tuesday evening, follows a number of earlier precautions by the company, including a ban on bringing outside visitors to its offices. Update: Google also announced Wednesday that all workers in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East and Africa will also start working from home Thursday.

Google is establishing a fund to support service workers and external contractors at affected locations. It “will enable all our temporary staff and vendors, globally, to take paid sick leave if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19, or can’t come into work because they’re quarantined,” Google head of workplace services Adrienne Crowther wrote in a blog post. The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary will also use the fund to implement its earlier commitment of compensating hourly staff for lost work time.

Numerous major tech firms, including Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., have implemented similar plans to keep paying hourly workers. The trio, along with others such as Twitter Inc., are also allowing employees in hard-hit areas to work from home. WHO’s declaration of the virus as a global pandemic may prompt at least some companies to follow Google’s lead and issue blanket work-from-home guidance for all their North American employees.

Major industry players are making other adjustments to other parts of their business operations as well. Google and Facebook have temporarily prohibited ads for medical face masks, with the search giant saying it will consider extending the ban to other products such as hand sanitizers. 

The tech event circuit is likewise continuing to feel the effects of the coronavirus. The National Association of Broadcasters today called off its annual NAB Show slated for April 18-22 and said it’s reviewing other options. And the organizers of the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, one of the largest conferences in the $120 billion video game industry, today called off this year’s conference.

Notably, the event was scheduled to take place three months from now in June, which shows some in the extended tech sector have started adjusting not just short-term roadmaps but also longer-term plans because of the coronavirus. More conference cancellations can be expected to follow. Large gatherings have been banned by authorities in several places worldwide including, as of this morning, the tech hubs of San Francisco and Seattle.

Investors are watching global developments with no small measure of anxiety. The Dow Industrial Average is down more than 1,280 points, or about 4.9%, at the time of writing, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are trading about 4.4% and 3.9% lower, respectively. 

Photo: Google