Tech billionaire Michael Dell says Dell is donating millions of dollars in cash and tech to fight the coronavirus (DELL)

Michael S. Dell

With three coronavirus cases confirmed in Dell's home town of Austin, the billionaire CEO issued a public statement and a link to a detailed blog post on how the company is keeping its workers safe, while still staying open for business.
"We are all in this together. Be safe and take care of each other," he said in a tweet that linked to the post.
In the post, he listed the ways that Dell, the company has been donating cash and tech to organizations fighting the virus.
Dell does not yet have a mandate for employees to work from home, and employees who must be on site to work are expected to report — but the company has increased the frequency of cleaning its office to three times a day.
Ever the salesman, Dell couldn't resist including a list of products that companies could buy from Dell to cope with the newly-mandated work from the
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Tech billionaire Michael Dell, who is known for his philanthropy, published a blog post on Friday that listed all the ways his company, Dell Technologies, is helping to fight the spread of coronavirus worldwide.

This information comes after public health officials in Dell's hometown of Austin had confirmed three cases of COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, in the area. It has not released information about where these people worked, and Dell's public posts did imply that the workers were connected to Dell.

On the philanthropic side, Dell says the company has made a donation of two million yuan ($284,000 USD) to fund in-demand materials "including surgical masks, protective clothing and eye protectors for local hospitals" in China.

The company has also set aside $3 million in funds and in-kind technology to provide donations for other coronavirus-worthy causes worldwide. And it has agreed to match employee donations to the CDC Foundation's Emergency Response Fund up to $10,000 per employee.

Dell has cancelled several major events, including turning its massive Dell Technologies World 2020 customer event into a virtual conference.

As far as employees working from home, it hasn't reached the point of mandating it, as its California-based competitor, Cisco did earlier this week.

Dell writes that 65% of its employees already work from home on a some kind of a regular basis, regardless. It has, however, implemented an ask-your-manager policy for all its workers — for instance, Dell is allowing many customer support people to work from home.

For employees who must be onsite to do their jobs, the company promised that it was doing a deep sanitizing and cleaning of the facilities every night, and two more cleanings per day — and that it's put extra hand sanitizer everywhere around its buildings.

But, ever the salesman, his list also includes a rundown of all the products Dell says that he thinks could help enterprises cope during the pandemic, including encouraging companies to outfit their remote workers by buying Dell laptops preloaded with Dell software for secure access to corporate apps, or the company's laptop docks and headphones.

Investors, for their part, have been worried about the company. As a major hardware vendor, Dell has manufacturing facilities and suppliers in China, although it also has them elsewhere. And so, the stock tanked the day after Dell issued its earnings on February 27, when the company warned that the coronavirus was creating a lot of uncertainty in its forecasts. The stock was trading at hit a high of over $53 on February 19 and has drifted down to just under $34 at market close on Friday.

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