Online Retail Giant Amazon and Coronavirus Pandemic

The world-famous company is trying to adapt to the new reality, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to affects its operations. Recently, an Amazon warehouse worker in New York tested positive for coronavirus. It is the first case for the online retail giant as well as the U.S. delivery network.

According to a spokesperson for the company, Amazon is supporting the individual. Moreover, the company temporarily closed the delivery station in Queens, for further sanitizing as well as made the decision to send employees home with full pay. Interestingly, a delivery station is smaller than the so-called fulfillment center. Notably, thousands of people work in fulfillment centers.

It is worth noting that, Amazon did not specify how many people are working in the Queens warehouse. Moreover, the spokesperson declined to comment on when the facility will resume operations.

Two office employees in Seattle tested positive for coronavirus before this case. However, this is the first positive case of the virus among the hourly Amazon warehouse employees in the country.

Amazon and its employees

The online retail giant has to deal with several problems at the same time. People spend more time at home and as a result, they started to order more products from Amazon and other companies as well.

Amazon is trying to tackle this problem by adding 100,000 employees to increase the number of employees in warehouses as well as in delivery centers.

Moreover, warehouses are prohibited from stocking and shipping non-essential items for the next three weeks. The retail giant made this decision as it is working to eliminate the problems connected with the lack of necessary products.

This is not the end of the story, as the company needs to safeguard its employees. Amazon prepared a $25 million relief fund to provide workers, who tested positive with two weeks of sick pay.