Covid 19 coronavirus: MediaWorks hit by a number of coronavirus cases

A number of staff have contracted coronavirus at media company MediaWorks. Photo / File

Television and radio station owner MediaWorks has been hit with "a number" of coronavirus cases, the company's boss has revealed.

Michael Anderson, chief executive of the company that owns Three, told a special parliamentary committee the company's 1200 staff were facing many challenges at the moment.

NeedToKnow3

This included keeping safe during the pandemic.

"We've had a number of people, just a few, but we've had a number of people pick up Covid within our organisation," Anderson yesterday told the Epidemic Response Committee, chaired by Opposition leader Simon Bridges.

"We're very mindful of the safety and very supportive of the level 4 lockdown."

Anderson said his company cared deeply about its staff and was fighting hard to not only keep them safe but employed during the coronavirus crisis.

His comments came after the company informed staff in an email over the weekend that one of its workers had been identified as a possible Covid-19 case.

A number of staff have contracted coronavirus at media company MediaWorks. Photo / File

The company's health and safety manager wrote: "I'm emailing to advise you that there is a staff member with a potential case of Covid-19 who worked on (level 3) Flower Street over the weekend."

As a result, the area where the staffer worked underwent a "deep clean" overnight, with staff being told contact-tracing was now being carried out.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

Anyone identified as being a possible close contact to the employee would receive an email in the coming days, the email said.

A MediaWorks spokeswoman would not reveal more details about the cases when contacted by the Herald last night.

"MediaWorks does not comment on matters relating to our people and their private matters," she said.

Media companies are deemed essential workers during the lockdown, but despite reporting on the outbreak have yet to suffer from many positive test cases.

It came as there were 20 new coronavirus cases were reported in New Zealand, made up of six confirmed cases and 14 probable cases.

This brought the country's total number of cases to 1386 - 728 of which have now recovered.

Anderson joined a series of senior media industry figures appearing at the Epidemic Response Committee to speak about the financial pressures they were under as advertising revenue plummeted up to 50 per cent during the lockdown and pandemic.

Those appearing included the heads of Stuff, NZME, TVNZ, RNZ, Newsroom, The Spinoff and BusinessDesk.