Amazon recognizes 20,000 cases of COVID-19 and challenges rivals

Days before the postponed Prime Day 2020, retail giant Amazon acknowledged that approximately 19,816 of its workers may have been infected with COVID-19.

Amazon revealed an analysis of data from 1,372,000 frontline Amazon and Whole Foods Market employees in the United States between March 1 and September 19, 2020.

The figure represents 42 percent fewer than the 33,952 cases that could have been infected in the same period, according to a comparison with general population data reported by Johns Hopkins University.

Jeff Bezos’ company said the result is part of a series of measures taken to detect COVID-19 among its collaborators, such as bringing together specialists from different disciplines and modifying more than 150 processes, including the distribution of more than 100 million masks.

Optimistic figures?

Amazon said the estimates were “conservative” because it included confirmed and suspected cases, and because the actual rates of VOC-19 in the general population “are higher than the official counts.

“In contrast, Amazon employees are regularly screened for symptoms and more and more tests are done on the job, regardless of whether they show symptoms, to identify asymptomatic cases,” the company said.

It added that “a positive test does not mean that someone has become infected as a result of their employment at Amazon; these people can be exposed in many ways outside of work.

Challenging rivals

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Along with releasing its data, Amazon also challenged its rivals, such as Walmart and other retail chains.

“We decided to publicly share COVID-19 infection rates among Amazon’s frontline employees, something few companies and no other major retailers have done,” the company said.

It added that “we hope that other large companies will also publish their detailed learning and case rates because doing so will help us all. This is not a field in which companies should compete, it is a field in which companies should help each other.

“This information would be more powerful if there were similar data from other major employers to compare. The wide availability of data would allow us to compare our progress and share best practices across companies and industries,” he added.

The company said that “unfortunately” there are no standards for reporting or sharing this information. “There is very little comparable information on infection rates and quarantine rates available from other companies,” he said.