Amazon tells employees in New York and New Jersey to work from home as coronavirus spreads

• Amazon on Monday told employees in New York and New Jersey to work from home if they can throughout the month of March.
• Last week, the company informed employees at its San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Seattle and Bellevue, Washington offices to work from home if they can.

Nikol Szymul staffs a reception desk at Amazon offices discretely tucked into a building called Fiona in downtown Seattle, Washington on May 11, 2017.

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Amazon is asking employees at its New York and New Jersey offices to work from home if they can until the end of the month. 

The company informed employees of the change on Monday. The Amazon-owned audiobook company, Audible, is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey. Amazon also employs thousands of people in New York City, including employees at Amazon Web Services and members of sales and marketing teams, among other units.

Last week, Amazon told employees at its offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle area to work from home if they can until the end of the month. The announcement came after an employee in one of its Seattle offices tested positive for COVID-19.

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in statement: "We continue to work closely with public and private medical experts to ensure we are taking the right precautions as the situation continues to evolve. This includes recommending that employees who are able to work from home in Seattle/Bellevue, the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey and the Lombardy region/Asti province of Italy do so through the end of March."

Amazon last month restricted all nonessential travel in the U.S. in response to continued spread of the coronavirus. 

Several technology companies have been urging their employees to work from home in light of the coronavirus. Salesforce on Saturday asked employees in California to work remotely throughout the month of March due to the coronavirus.

Facebook encouraged all of its 5,000 employees in Seattle to work from home the rest of the month, after a worker in the area tested positive for the coronavirus. Microsoft also urged employees in the Bay Area in California and the Puget Sound area of Washington to work from home, while Twitter advised employees to do the same if they can. 

As of Monday afternoon, there are now more than 113,300 cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and at least 3,892 people have died from the virus. There are at least 600 confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S., and at least 22 deaths.