Over 19,000 Amazon employees tested positive for COVID-19



10/05/2020 9:53 AM


Amazon.com, the largest Internet retailer in the world, stated that 19,816 of its employees were tested positive for the coronavirus. In total, the company employs more than 1.3 people in the US. This is the first time when a US employer this large provided such data.



Donald Trung Quoc Don (Chữ Hán: 徵國單) - Wikimedia Commons
Amazon expected to receive 33,952 coronavirus-positive tests given the level of incidence in the country as a whole.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were about 2,180 cases of the COVID-19 infection per 100,000 people. The WSJ estimates that Amazon's incidence rate was about 1442 cases per 100,000 employees.

When the pandemic started, Amazon employees criticized their managers for reacting to the pandemic and even went on strike, demanding the temporary closure of facilities with infected employees. 

A few months ago, the firm began building its own laboratories to analyze probes. Since March, thousands of Amazon employees have been tested. The retailer promised to run 50,000 tests daily by November.

Amazon called on other corporations to provide similar information - a step that very few companies have taken, even considering that some of them have recruited new employees to meet the dramatically increased demand at the beginning of the pandemic.

The company noted that there are no standards for reporting, sharing data, or even searching for comparable information from other major employers about infestations or quarantine measures.

source: wsj.com


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