Not long after NBC News talked about Amazon’s lack of transparency of Covid-19 outbreaks in its facilities, the company released data on the number of employees who checked or positive for Covid-19.
According to Engadget, this type of information is largely not published by other major US companies, and while it is difficult to accurately gauge data from Amazon, more or less people will have a certain view of the matter. in company. Amazon says it is doing thousands of tests per day, and plans to hit 50,000 tests per day for its 650 corporate sites by November.
Amazon says of the 1,372,000 employees working at its facilities between September 1 and 19, about 19,816 tested positive for Covid-19.
According to Amazon, using Johns Hopkins University data over the same time period and taking into account factors such as geography and age, the company estimates that based on the prevalence of the general population, they will have 33,952 positive cases. Further, analysis by status shows that the percentage of infections among staff followed is lower than in the general population in most cases.
However, for the state of Minnesota, the proportion of Amazon employees infected with Covid-19 was 31.7 per 1,000, much higher than the state reported rate of 15.8 per 1,000 people. This is in line with previous reports by CNBC and Bloomberg, showing higher infection rates, and how they were inconsistent with Amazon’s public statements at the time. CNBC notes these numbers do not include Amazon’s network of third-party delivery partners.