Amazon has, for the first time, published the number of its employees that contracted COVID-19. As an essential service, it had kept its business open during the pandemic and delivered essential items to the majority who could not leave their homes due to the lockdown guidelines.
1.44 percent of Amazon’s front-line employees, translating to 19,816 workers, have tested positive or been ‘presumed positive for COVID-19,’ Amazon said in a blog post. According to the company, it has 1,372,000 front-line employees working across both Amazon and Whole Foods.
The announcement comes after workers and Amazon investors have demanded for increased transparency. Even its warehouse workers had reportedly tried to collaborate to determine how many of their colleagues have contracted the disease.
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In May 2020, Dave Clark, Amazon senior vice president of worldwide operations, in an interview had said that the total number of cases isn’t particularly useful.
According to Amazon, its 19,816 cases are lower than the estimates of 33,952, if it’s comparing its total employee count with a general population case rate reported by Johns Hopkins University. At the same time, at least 10 employees reportedly died from the virus. However, the company didn’t discuss the deaths in the blog post.
The company says it conducts thousands of COVID-19 tests every day. It says it has a goal of conducting 50,000 tests per day across 650 sites by November 2020.
Amazon also adds that it distributed more than 100 million face masks. Also instituting temperature checks and introducing enhanced cleaning procedures across all its sites.
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