To our valued clients

On Wednesday 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus (COVID-19) an official pandemic.

We understand the questions this pandemic raises regarding insurance coverage and risk exposures. To provide accurate advice to you, and prior to booking or changing any existing travel arrangements, we request that you contact your Account Executive, as every person and business has its own risk profile, and insurance programs differ. Some insurers now consider COVID-19 to be a known event and will not cover cancellation expenses involving travel bookings made from March 2020 onwards; others have already confirmed and communicated their absolute ‘Pandemic’ exclusions.

Please do not hesitate to contact us, as every question is important.

Steadfast Taswide, and Steadfast Taswide (Victoria), both remain fully operational and our immediate priority is to take reasonable steps to ensure the health and wellbeing of our clients and our people. To this end, we’d like to update you on the precautions we are taking to reduce the risk of COVID-19. The current restrictions for our entire team include:

Travel bans on all business domestic and international travel.

Minimising all external meetings, training and client visits until further advices follow at the end of the month.
We will be seeking your co-operation to communicate with you via phone, skype, facetime or similar mediums during this time.

We will be continually reviewing the medical and other available information and keeping abreast of developments as they occur. Any such information will be immediately passed onto all our team. Minimising any disruption to our clients is always a high priority for us.

It continues to remain important that we focus on the facts and safety protocols as advised by the Australian Government Department of Health, the Ministry of Health New Zealand and the Ministry of Health Singapore. These form the basis for our company position, together with the international experience other countries pass on about infection, isolation & treatment.

As at 11th March 2020, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has raised their travel warning level for seven countries:

China and Iran – to ‘do not travel’

South Korea - to ‘Reconsider your need to travel’

Japan, Italy, Indonesia and Mongolia – to ‘exercise a high degree of caution’

For the record the symptoms of COVID-19 include:

Fever.

Flu-like symptoms such as coughing, sore throat and headaches.
Difficulty in breathing.

Try to prevent the spread of COVID-19:

Be vigilant with your personal hygiene.

Washing your hands and use hand sanitiser, as often as possible
Cough or sneeze into your elbow.
Adopt a ‘No handshake’ policy. People are touching elbows as a friendly greeting.
Avoid contact with wild animals or farm animals.

Further information can also be found at https://www.smartraveller.gov.au/news-and-updates/coronavirus-covid-19

As always, please get in touch if we can help in anyway.

Steadfast Taswide &

Steadfast Taswide (Victoria) Teams