Another Amazon warehouse employee tests positive for coronavirus in Sacramento
Another employee at Amazon’s warehouse near Sacramento International Airport has tested positive for COVID-19, at least the second worker there with a confirmed case of the disease.
In a text message alert to employees, Amazon notified staff of the infection but said the affected individual had not been at the site, referred to internally as SMF1, since April 13.
“We continue to take measures to keep you safe: implementing mandatory social distancing, requiring all to wear a face covering, conducting temperature checks, and doing more frequent cleanings,” the text continued.
Amazon has faced scrutiny from the public and its own workers regarding the health and safety of its warehouse employees, particularly in the weeks before and during states’ implementations of stay-at-home orders that effectively shuttered large sectors of the economy. The shutdowns have been an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious virus.
“We are supporting the individuals who are recovering,” Amazon spokesman Timothy Carter said in an emailed statement in response to The Bee’s request for comment. “We are following guidelines from health officials and medical experts, and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site.”
Carter did not respond to a question about how many total workers have tested positive at the Sacramento site, but he previously confirmed the first known case of COVID-19 at SMF1 on April 10, saying the employee was “recovering.”
The disclosure came the same day the e-commerce giant announced it had hired another 800 workers in Sacramento to keep up with surging demand during the pandemic, which has kept Californians home-bound since Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home mandate March 19. The rest of the U.S. shut down within several days.
Later in March, when the nationwide total of coronavirus cases was orders of magnitude lower than the current figure of more than 1.2 million, the Washington Post reported that employees had tested positive for the coronavirus in 10 other Amazon facilities around the country, including one in Moreno Valley in California’s Inland Empire. The Washington Post is owned by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos.
Workers in Sacramento complained to The Bee around mid-March that Amazon had been adhering to rules calling for just 3 feet of social distancing, even though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had recommended at least 6 feet of separation, which is still the active guidance given by the agency.
The 3-foot guidance came from the World Health Organization. Amazon in late March switched to the 6-foot standard.
Carter told The Bee last month and again Wednesday that whenever a COVID-19 case is confirmed, every employee who works in the building is notified, not just those working in close proximity to the diagnosed worker. Any Amazon warehouse employee who tests positive or is placed in quarantine gets up to two weeks of pay, he said.
Amazon in mid-March set a goal of hiring 100,000 additional full- and part-time workers across the company, to meet demand during the pandemic. That goal was reached by April 13, Amazon said in a blog post. By the end of April, Amazon said it had added more than 175,000 workers amid the pandemic.
The company says it expects to spend more than $800 million in the first half of 2020 on COVID-19 safety measures, and has already provided more than 100 million masks and 31,000 thermometers for employees.
