Nearly 20,000 Amazon Employees Have Tested Positive For COVID-19

Source: ERIC PIERMONT / Getty

Amazon just revealed that almost 20,000 of the company’s employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

On Thursday, Amazon revealed in a blog post that analysis was conducted on its 1,372,000 Amazon and Whole Foods employees across the United States. With this analysis, they found that between March 1 and September 19, 19,816 workers caught the virus or more than likely had it.

While that number seems pretty insane, the company claims their positive cases were 42 percent lower than expected when comparing their statistics with the findings reported by Johns Hopkins University in regards to the general population.

Back in May, CNN reported that Amazon was opposed to sharing the number of coronavirus cases at its warehouses, arguing that this type of information isn’t “particularly useful.” That same month, though, their facility in Shakopee, Minnesota had 45 positive cases and a 1.7 percent infection rate, which was higher than the entire county–and nearly four times higher than any county in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.  The following month, the number of cases in the Shakopee facility grew to 88, while other warehouses in Minnesota accounted for another 99 positive results.

This news comes after Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and Amazon president Jeff Bezos received a letter from the attorney generals for Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and the District of Columbia requesting a state-by-state breakdown of COVID-19 cases.

Amazon said it has taken a variety of different precautions to prevent the spread of the virus in its warehouse.

The company’s latest data regarding COVID-19 infections comes as Amazon begins to gear up for its annual Prime Day sales event which is set for October 13th and 14th. The big event will mark another busy day for the company. Last month, Amazon hired an additional 100,000 employees to ramp up operations across the network.