Solo Lunches and Masks: Chinese Returning to Work Grapple With Coronavirus

Jin Yang, 28, who works in a department of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, has his temperature checked at an entrance to his office, in the morning on his first day of returning to work after the extended Lunar New Year holiday caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak, in Beijing, China, on Feb. 10, 2020. Tingshu Wang/Reuters

BEIJING/SHANGHAI—Chinese government employee Jin Yang returned to work in Beijing this week to find his usual workplace rules upended as China battles a coronavirus outbreak.

His office has banned the practice of eating lunch in its canteen with colleagues, in favor of boxed meals, packaged in house and eaten at desks, he said.