The head of Magna International Inc. said the company followed China’s lead when it came to addressing the spread of the coronavirus within its Chinese facilities.
“We have about 20,000 people in China,” Don Walker, Magna’s chief executive officer, told BNN Bloomberg in an interview taped on Thursday. “We had five employees that had the virus, four are better and one we think is in a good way.”
“(We’re) taking the lead from the Chinese government,” Walker said when asked about his company’s response. “The first thing was to try and isolate it. We shut down our factories. Most of our factories are up and running, maybe not full production, but getting there.”
Walker said it is too early to gauge the toll the virus will take on the auto parts manufacturer.
“We haven’t quantified what the impact will be, financially, because we don’t know yet,” Walker said.
“It will be interesting to see whether the slowdown in the production over the past month in China will impact vehicle production in North America or Europe but the carmakers and suppliers are all looking at the supply chain and trying to figure that out.”
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