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Amazon has begun to build out COVID-19 testing capacity for its employees, including those who aren't showing symptoms, CEO Jeff Bezos said this week.
The retail giant, which has 840,000 employees worldwide and plans to hire an additional 175,000 as it struggles to meet surging demand for groceries and household staples, laid out its response to the pandemic in a Thursday morning letter to shareholders.
"A next step in protecting our employees might be regular testing of all Amazonians, including those showing no symptoms," the tech mogul wrote in his letter. "Regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running."
"For this to work, we as a society would need vastly more testing capacity than is currently available," Bezos added.
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Amazon Fresh delivery person works in Union Square during the coronavirus pandemic on April 14, 2020 in New York City. (Getty Images)
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The Seattle-based company has started to build out "incremental testing capacity" thanks to the work of an internal team of research scientists, procurement specialists and software engineers. Amazon hopes to start testing "small numbers" of frontline employees soon.
"We’ve begun the work of building incremental testing capacity," Bezos said. "A team of Amazonians -- from research scientists and program managers to procurement specialists and software engineers -- moved from their normal day jobs onto a dedicated team to work on this initiative."
"We have begun assembling the equipment we need to build our first lab and hope to start testing small numbers of our frontline employees soon," he added. "We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it’s worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn."
Workers at several Amazon fulfillment centers have tested positive for COVID-19; at least one has died.
Bezos' letter goes on to tout a range of initiatives the company has taken -- including increasing pay for workers, doubling overtime pay, establishing a $25 million Amazon relief fund for its independent partners, and cracking down on thousands of fake accounts selling fraudulent coronavirus-related products.
As of Thursday afternoon, there were more than 2.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, including 641,166 in the United States.
The company has taken heat after firing employees who criticized working conditions at Amazon amid the pandemic. However, the tech giant insists they were fired for repeatedly violating company policies.
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