JUST IN: Tysons-Based Capital One Asking Employees to Work From Home

(Updated at 3:25 p.m.) Capital One is reportedly asking its employees to work from home to help prevent the coronavirus — affecting possibly thousands of employees at its Tysons headquarters.

Bloomberg News first reported that the banking giant is letting people work from home starting on Thursday. For employees who can’t work remotely, the company plans to begin “spacing out employees,” the memo from CEO Richard Fairbank says.

“While to date we have no known cases of coronavirus among our associates, we are taking further steps to encourage and enable social distancing,” according to a copy of the memo Tysons Reporter obtained.

The memo said that the company will announce increased paid sick leave and flexible attendance policies.

As of late 2018, Capital One had moved approximately 2,000 employees to its new headquarters next to the McLean Metro station.

The company has 52,000 employees in total.

Now being called a pandemic by the World Health Organization, the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus has prompted schools to close or switch to online learning and companies to ask employees to work from home.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Virginia Department of Health says there are nine “presumptive positive” cases of COVID-19 in the commonwealth, with five in Northern Virginia.