 |
| Amazon officially announces the number of employees infected with Corona |
On Thursday, Amazon published comprehensive data on the spread of the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) COVID-19 among its employees and announced for the first time the number of employees infected with the virus.
The e-commerce giant said in a statement: This year, more than 19,000 workers (1.44% of the total number of workers) have contracted the virus.
Between March 1 and September 19, Amazon counted 19,816 suspected or confirmed cases of coronavirus among nearly 1.37 million employees in the United States and local grocery markets.
After months of pressure from Amazon's work teams, politicians and regulatory authorities, this information has put Amazon under constant pressure to determine the number of workers infected with the virus (Covid-19).
When the outbreak began, warehouse workers feared that Amazon had taken enough steps to protect them from the disease and called for facilities to shut down with the confirmed cases. In the absence of data from Amazon, warehouse employees created a mass infection database based on notices of new cases from facilities in the United States.
The company had previously refused to share the data because it would be misleading and out of context. In a statement on Thursday, Amazon said that if other companies issued similar data, the total number of infections would be "stronger". "The availability of data at a scale allows us to measure our progress and share best practices between companies and industries," the company said.
At least eight company employees who died of Covid-19 were announced during the year, but Amazon did not provide updated numbers in its announcement on Thursday.
Walmart is Amazon's main competitor in the United States. Walmart said in April that less than 1% of its 1.5 million US employees had contracted the coronavirus. The company has not released any updated data since then.
It should be noted that the number announced by Amazon does not include the third-party delivery service network.
Compared to the "overall population rate" in the United States, the company said, the employee infection rate was 42% lower than expected. The company said that if Amazon's infection rate was equal to the average population, the total number of cases would reach 33,952.