Amazon: Around 19,816 frontline workers contract coronavirus

More than 19,816 front line workers in Amazon have contracted Coronavirus since March, according to the updates.

Company claimed in a blog post that 33,952 workers would have tested positive for the virus if amazon’s infection rate had equaled the wider populations when accounting for employees’ age and geography.

It said that it “introduced or changed over 150 processes”, distributed more than 100 million face masks, and implemented temperature checks at its facilities around the world.

The company added that it had enforced social distancing measures and additional cleaning, which “occurs across each site about every 90 minutes”.

“This information would be more powerful if there were similar data from other major employers to compare it to,” Amazon said in the blog post.

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Athena, a coalition that has opposed Amazon on a wide range of labor, planning, and environmental issues, called on officials to investigate further.

“Amazon allowed Covid-19 to spread like wildfire,” Athena’s director Dania Rajendra said in a statement.

Note that the company had landed faced backlash from employees, unions, and elected officials, who have accused the company of putting employees’ health at risk.

But sales soared 40% to $88.9bn (£67.9bn) in the three months ending in June, and its quarterly profit of $5.2bn (£4bn) was its biggest since the company started in 1994.