Musk’s SpaceX has hit 132 COVID-19 cases by Reuters

Author: Hyunjoo Jin

San Francisco (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company has reported 132 COVID-19 cases at its California headquarters, a quarter of the total number of cases at non-Los Angeles County locations, according to county data.

Recent cases are the second time that many COVID-19 cases have been reported in a company run by Musk. Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc., an electric car maker, reported 440 cases at its Fremont plant in Northern California from May to December 2020, according to data from Alameda County, obtained by the Plainsite legal information site.

In an internal message sent to employees on Monday, SpaceX said 132 cases had been reported since September, “when several employees working in the same field were hired out of work for COVID, in a non-work-related event.”

“Again, that doesn’t mean that 132 Hawthorn employees today have COVID or have been hired at the workplace,” he said, referring to SpaceX-based city of Los Angeles.

Upon request, SpaceX shared an internal email.

A total of 496 COVID-19 cases were confirmed in out-of-residence areas such as workplaces, food and retail stores, and places of worship, Los Angeles County said, without specifying the timeframe for such cases. SpaceX reported the highest number of cases in the county, with the Los Angeles office of FedEx Corp (NYSE:) with 85 cases.

SpaceX is the most established player in the growing constellation of commercial rocket business. It has already sent a large number of cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In May 2020, Musk sued Alameda County when it reopened the Fremont Tesla plant, challenging the county’s blocking measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.