The number of coronavirus cases at a Minnesota Amazon warehouse was at least four imes higher than the rate of its surrounding communities.
The warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota, had at least 45 COVID-19 cases as of mid-May that Amazon was aware of, which was enough for an infection rate of 1.7%, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg. The rate was higher than the rural county it resides in and more than double of other nearby counties in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Hennepin County, which houses Minneapolis, had a rate of 0.4%.
Amazon managers believed employees contracted the virus while on the job, and the authors of the memo said the rise in cases likely corresponded with the increase in testing across Minnesota.
Amazon executives have pushed back on the idea that warehouses are contracting the virus at higher rates than their adjacent communities, saying they believe the majority of their warehouse sites are at or below the county rates where they reside.
“We utilize a variety of data to closely monitor the safety of our buildings, and there is strong evidence that our employees are not proliferating the virus at work — what we see generally is that the overall rate of infection and increase or decrease of total cases is highly correlated to the overall community rate of infection,” Amazon spokesman Timothy Carter told the Washington Examiner. “Over the months of COVID-19, thousands of employees and partners have worked at our Shakopee site, and we believe strongly people are not spreading the virus at work, given the robust safety measures we’ve put into place.”
Carter also said the company is taking extra precautions to ensure the safety of its employees.
“We have redeployed a large number of our data scientists, technologists, and operations employees to focus on COVID-19 and ensure the safety of our workforce, including thousands of individuals on our health and safety teams,” Carter said. “An in-depth analysis of sites is one of many tools that help us evaluate the full picture in our buildings related to COVID-19. In addition to a deep dive by a site, other tools include social distancing audits and having an epidemiologist review available data to ensure our safety measures are effectively protecting workers from exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace.”
Amazon has not revealed how many workers have contracted the virus.
