Amazon Employees At 6 Locations Tested Positive For COVID-19

The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread in the U.S. as workers at six Amazon warehouses were tested positive for COVID-19.

According to a Washington Post’s report, the coronavirus-infected Amazon warehouses are in New York; Shepherdsville, Florida; Katy, Texas; Brownstone, Michigan, Oklahoma City; and Jacksonville, Kentucky.

Some of these warehouses were closed for sanitization. Meanwhile, the employees who were in close contact with the infected workers were kept in quarantine.

Elsewhere, in Jacksonville, the tech giant told News4Jax that a worker who was at Amazon’s fulfillment center close to the airport was tested positive for coronavirus. The Amazon spokesperson stated that the company is supporting the worker who is recovering from COVID-19.

“We are following guidelines from local officials and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site,” the spokesperson said.

The report stated that managers at Amazon were looking for the worker’s contact to find out if there were more infected people. Any fellow associate who was exposed will be informed and asked to remain in isolation for 14 days.

“I think the company should send us home and disinfect the building from top to bottom. There’s no way to tell if that person touched anything that anyone else touched,” an Amazon employee at Jacksonville’s facility told News4Jax.

The recent coronavirus outbreaks at Amazon facilities come days after the company announced that it was ramping up hiring and opening new roles across the U.S. “We are opening 100,000 new full and part-time positions across the U.S. in our fulfillment centers and delivery network to meet the surge in demand from people relying on Amazon’s service during this stressful time, particularly those most vulnerable to being out in public,” Dave Clark, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations wrote in a blog post.

Clark further stated that the company will add $2/hour to the current rate of $15/hour or more in the U.S.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed 18,916 people across the world. The total confirmed COVID-19 cases have surpassed 420,000. More than 108,000 people have recovered from this illness.