Nearly 20,000 Amazon workers have tested positive for COVID-19

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In a recent statement, Amazon disclosed that nearly 20,000 of its workforce in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19. They decided to shed light on the number of coronavirus infections among their workers after months of demands from politicians, regulators, and activists.

Amazon revealed that the latest number of employees that have contracted the coronavirus is precisely 19,816. That’s roughly 1.44% of their 1.37 million employees, including workers at Whole Foods. However, they didn’t discover how many of those affected are warehouse workers.

For comparison, Walmart reported that fewer than 1% of its workforce contracted the coronavirus. Currently, Walmart is the single largest employer in the United States and has approximately 1.5 million employees.

Furthermore, Amazon didn’t mention how many of the people that work for its third-party delivery network contracted COVID-19.

But they mentioned that the infection rate among their workforce was 42% lower than they expected. Amazon even compared their infection rate with that of the general population infection rate in the US. According to their calculations, if their infection rates were similar to the general population infection rates in the US, the number of infected Amazon workers would have been 33,952.

Through their official blog, they explained in length the measures they have taken to protect their workers’ health at work. However, some of their employees disputed those claims. According to employees and other sources, in some warehouses, the infection rates outdo the average community infection rates by quite a bit.

From the very start of the pandemic, Amazon was frequently called upon for not doing enough to protect its employees. Amazon was especially scrutinized for keeping their warehouses open and people working in them during lockdowns.

But even with all the criticism, they recorded an unprecedented growth during the pandemic. The value of the Amazon stock skyrocketed in the last six months. As a result, Amazon is now worth $1.5 trillion, whereas Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, has a net worth of more than $200 billion.

The latest update from Amazon is that they plan to test their many front-line workers for COVID-19. They even hired a team of researchers, lab experts, procurement specialists, and other experts to build their testing facilities. As soon as they get their testing program operational, they plan to make 50,000 tests available every day, across 650 sites.

What do you think? Surprised that Amazon’s infection rate is lower than they expected? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Deep Ballu