Detecting that employees were positive for Covid-19, NASA had to lay off nearly 17,000 employees to avoid the outbreak

Due to fear of the Covid-19 flu, NASA had most of its employees working from home; nearly 17,000 employees were laid off, leaving only the key officials to stay on duty at the headquarters. The decision to leave is effective immediately - on Tuesday night local time, and it is unclear when the employee will return to work.

Detecting that employees were positive for Covid-19, NASA had to lay off nearly 17,000 employees to avoid the outbreak Picture 1

Jim Bridenstine, director of NASA.

Why did Jim Bridenstine, NASA director, make such an emergency leave request? Several NASA employees were positive for SARS-CoV-2 virus, they resided at Ames Research Center in California and Marshall Space Travel Center located in Alabama.

' We urgently take steps to leave employees at home to avoid spreading the virus in the work force and the public ,' adds Bridenstine.

NASA has a set of steps to be taken to deal with the urgent situation. Level 1, the lightest, will require employees working at the brain centers to keep a distance, reduce unnecessary travel, take basic self-protection steps to avoid spreading the virus.

Level 4, the highest level - currently applied to the Ames Research Center - will force most offices to be closed, ' unless it is necessary to protect lives and critical infrastructure areas '.

Currently, the majority of NASA bases across the United States are being asked to respond to the Level 3 epidemic.

The representative of NASA said that this is the first time this space agency has faced with the situation, which has to leave most employees to avoid infectious diseases. Business Insider has asked NASA about the missions of the affected space, but the world's leading space agency has no answer.