CN’s biggest oil firm in state of emergency after staff positive

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China's largest oil and gas producer and supplier, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), also the world's third-largest oil firm, has told all of its Beijing units to enter a state of emergency after four employees tested positive for COVID-19.

On Thursday, four employees of CNPC had tested positive, including one from Northeast China's Jilin Province. And four family members living with one of the positive cases in Beijing's Haidian district were confirmed to be infected with COVID-19.

Based in Beijing, the state-owned giant immediately started to conduct nucleic acid testing for all employees in the capital, Liu Shengyao, deputy director of the Integrated Management Department of the CNPC, said at a press conference addressing epidemic prevention and control on Thursday. 

The move came after 111 employees attended meetings in Beijing sharing conference rooms with a company employee from Northeast China's Jilin Province, who was later found to be COVID-19 positive.

This Jilin patient had a business trip to Beijing from October 20 to November 7, and was confirmed to have been infected with COVID-19 on November 10. The patient visited Beijing's Haidian, Chaoyang and Dongcheng districts.

Liu said that the confirmed case from Jilin attended the company's meetings from November 2-5 in Beijing, while vowing that the company will strengthen the management of its offices and personnel, and deploy strict environmental testing and disinfection protocols. 

The company, which ranks fourth on the 2021 Fortune Global 500 list, asked its employees to continue to work as usual and cooperate with the investigation, while employees who had left the Beijing building were asked to work at home for a seven-day quarantine period, so as to ensure the normal production and operation of oil and gas supplies.