Since the start of March, almost 19,800 Amazon employees have tested positive for Covid-19. The company itself revealed this shocking figures.
Amazon said data from the ecommerce giant’s 1.37 million frontline workers, including wholesale food market grocery (Whole Foods) stores in the U.S., showed lower infection rates than expected.
The figures were released after some workers at logistics centers questioned the company’s security for protecting them from pandemics and their reluctance to share information about infected colleagues.
Amazon has speedup the proceedings by testing up to 50,000 a day around its 650 sites.
In a blog spot sharing Covid-19 infection rates among its frontline workers, Amazon said that since the beginning of this crisis, they’ve worked hard to keep their employees informed and they were regular in notifying them of every new case in their building.
The company says that if the rate of infection among Amazon and Whole Foods workers was the same as the average U.S. population, the number of cases would be 33,000.
The labor and migrant activist coalition Athena said that, since the early stages of the pandemic itself, the workers at Amazon were asking for the coronavirus infection rate within the company facilities.
“Now we know why the corporation refused,” said Athena director Dania Rajendra.
She said that Amazon allowed Covid-19 to spread like wildfire in its facilities.
Ms Rajendra called for an investigation into Covid-19 spread at Amazon workplaces by public health officials. She mentioned that the company is not a threat to the public health.