Amazon is dropping some alarming stats and, in case you were wondering, life on the frontlines ain't easy for their employees ... nearly 20,000 of whom they believe caught COVID-19.
The shipping giant made the revelation Thursday in a report about its testing policies and how it's responding to the health crisis. Amazon said between March 1 and September 19 ... 19,816 employees were either presumed or confirmed to have contracted the coronavirus. That's out of their roughly 1.37 million staffers at Amazon and Whole Foods Market.
While the number is startling, Amazon says its rate of infection among employees was way lower than expected. The company noted it could have reached 33,952 sick workers if its infection rate ran parallel to the general population.
BTW, the stats don't include third-party delivery drivers.
Amazon says it's currently conducting thousands of tests daily at its warehouses and by November they could be doing as many as 50,000 tests per day in 650 facilities.
The news comes months after Amazon went into damage control mode following reports of overworked employees who said they do NOT feel safe from the virus. The company had previously declined to disclose how many workers had been infected.