Coronavirus Sky call centre employee: 'There's a sense of panic.'

Sky’s Cardiff call centre

CJS News speaks exclusively to a Sky call centre employee about the reaction to the outbreak in their building.

One of Sky’s Cardiff’s call centre employees described a sense of panic as their office was shut down when a colleague tested positive for Coronavirus.

When the case was confirmed yesterday afternoon, the building was shut down for deep cleaning, and is set to re-open tomorrow.

The employee, who would like to remain anonymous, told CJS News, “The message came through as an email so no-one actually came up to us to tell us, and judging by the managers reaction they didn’t know either.

“We saw it and the call centre had to be closed down immediately, so we obviously just told the customer we’re really sorry we have to go and ended the call. “

The outbreak was declared as a pandemic this afternoon by the World Health Organisation.

It has resulted in 19 Coronavirus cases in Wales, but the Sky employee says that “some people have been advised to self isolate and some are being told to self isolate for two weeks so there’s different information going around.

“It’s causing a bit of fear and hysteria in the call centre because people don’t know if they could have  possibly been infected, or if they are worrying for no reason.”

Our source said that a lot of staff were feeling anxious about whether they had contracted the virus assaying “we don’t know who the employee is, we don’t know if they’d been to an infected country.

“We don’t know anything because we don’t know if we’ve actually come into contact with that person. There’s definitely  a sense of panic especially when you go past people and think, oh no what if I pass something on.

“If you’re living with someone with underlying health issues you think what’s gonna happen here type thing, because you don’t know what measures you’re supposed to be taking. “

Sky were scheduled to re-open tomorrow after the company ordered a deep clean in the call centre.

Staff are still unsure whether they will return to work tomorrow.

Yesterday Sky released this statement to CJS News: “We can confirm that a Sky colleague in our Cardiff contact centre has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and they are self-isolating at home.

“Protecting our people is – and always will be – our top priority and so we are closing the contact centre today and sending everyone home as a precaution. We’re contacting anyone who has been in contact with our colleague and the centre itself will be deep cleaned before re-opening on Thursday.”