On 06 November Apple warned its customers that shipments of the latest iPhone models would be delayed because of a Covid outbreak at the Foxconn Zhengzhou plant, in Henan province, which is the company’s main production facility for the latest iPhone 14 Pro. While the US corporate giant maintains "the health and safety of employees comes first", the same cannot necessarily be said for its supplier contractor Foxconn. Since October 2022, the production facility, which employs some 300,000 appears to have been prioritising production metrics over health and safety regulations.
On 25 October 2022, messages posted on the Chinese social network Weibo revealed that the Taiwanese company Foxconn had tried to hide a covid outbreak at its Zhengzhou factory. According to some sources, fewer than a dozen covid cases started appearing on 08 October. However while case numbers escalated Foxconn decided to keep its production lines rolling by imposing a ‘closed loop’ system, controlling staff teams, and initially by attempting to isolate confirmed covid-19 cases internally while
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Article authors
Éric Sautedé
Freelance