All staff at the Web Summit have been told to work from home until March 18th as a precaution amid growing fears about the coronavirus.

The decision was made on Tuesday afternoon to allow their 200 staff in Ireland to work remotely from Wednesday.

The Web Summit decided to trial some of its teams working from home on Monday.

The decision has now been made to extend that to all staff until March 18th as a precaution.

A spokesperson for Web Summit said there is no evidence of a staff member having the coronavirus - nor was the decision made because of any staff member - but that management decided to be safe rather than sorry.

The company has around 200 staff in Ireland who will work at home for two weeks from Wednesday, and a further 40 staff working outside the country.

The company says many of its teams routinely work remotely and it will not impact their work.

It comes after the majority of Google's 8,000 staff will continue to work from home on Wednesday after a staff member showed flu-like symptoms.

Social media site Twitter has also urged all its workers around the world to work from home where possible.

Reporting by Sean Defoe