ANOTHER trading room was closed at CIMB-GK Securities' Raffles Place office yesterday and an additional 40 remisiers were sent home, after a second remisier from the company was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus.

On Thursday, 50 remisiers from one trading floor at CIMB-GK were put on home quarantine after one of them caught the H1N1 virus from his son. Both infected remisiers are stable condition, the firm said yesterday.

'We have activated our business continuity plan and are monitoring the developments closely,' said a spokesman. 'CIMB-GK expects minimum disruption to our business operations.'

The move underscores how serious companies and ordinary Singaporeans are when it comes to tackling the H1N1 virus, even as the number of confirmed cases here climbed to 365.

Parents here are in favour of keeping their children home from school and companies are asking employees to stay away even on the slightest chance that they could be infected.

And community organisations such as churches are now actively practising contact tracing - and even suspending services in some cases.

Companies here, most of whom have business continuity plans that were knocked together during the Sars outbreak in 2003, said that they are taking every precaution when it comes to tackling the H1N1 virus.

SingTel, for one, has in place a slew of measures such as working from home and the formation of special support teams.

Businesses are also making sure that face masks and hand sanitisers are readily available. A Hong Leong Group spokesman said that all City Developments and Hong Leong Holdings office buildings have hand sanitiser dispensers located at high traffic areas such as lift lobbies.

The most common practice appears to be quarantining staff who return to work after trips or vacations to H1NI-stricken areas, and BT understands that many companies here are encouraging even employees with the common flu to work from home or take medical leave. But some employees whom BT spoke to said that this means that the workload for the remaining workers has increased.

'The office is very empty because people returning from holidays are staying at home for a few extra days, and there are also people who are just sick, not from H1N1 but just from normal flu, who are also staying at home. The rest of us are working until very late every day,' said an operations executive at a bank.

Singaporeans would also rather be safe than sorry when it comes to their school-going kids. An MSN poll of 4,400 people found that 72 per cent of respondents strongly suggested that students should not have to go to school once the current school holidays end next week.

RiverLife Church, which was identified as one of the clusters where H1N1 cases were spread, said that all church-based meetings and programmes will be suspended with immediate effect until July 4. The church had previously suspended all children and youth-related programmes.

'We continue to pray for God's protection over Singapore during this time,' said the church in a statement.