Amazon released some long-awaited data this week – the number of Amazon employees who either tested positive for Covid-19 or are otherwise suspected of being infected.
The Amazon news has been overshadowed by news that President Trump and the First Lady, of course, tested positive, but there’s a surprising impact on Amazon’s infection rates – starting with Amazon’s conclusion that its employees are less infected than the broad one Publicity .
According to Amazon, 1.372 million people are on the front lines, mostly in Amazon warehouses and Whole Foods supermarkets. Of them, the company said in a statement that it has seen a total of 19,816 employees with confirmed or suspected positive diagnoses.
This corresponds to an infection rate of 1.44 percent. And Amazon says the number is 42 percent lower than expected compared to the level of infection in the general population, “which takes into account the geography and age composition of our employees.”
Is it checking out? Well, I have bookmarked it to the cumulative diagnoses ongoing tab that the New York Times maintains, which is showing 7.3 million cases as of Friday.
As part of the U.S. population, which was roughly 331 million earlier this year, that would result in an infection rate of 2.20 percent. The rate of infection from Amazon would indeed be significantly lower, although again we need to consider the age and location of Amazon employees.
With a few exceptions, Amazon has also broken down reporting rates from state to state, which largely reflected the trend. In 39 states, the company claimed the data showed that employee infection rates were lower than expected compared to the rest of the state.
The biggest outlier was Minnesota, where Amazon employees had an infection rate of 3.17 percent, compared with 1.58 percent in the state. Coincidentally, a high rate of infection was discovered earlier this year at an Amazon warehouse in Minnesota.
According to the data that Amazon released this week, this seems to have been an exception to the rule.
Amazon employees in West Virginia also had a higher infection rate: 1.31 percent infection rate compared to a state case rate of 0.77 percent. In addition, nine states have fewer than 1,000 Amazon employees, “which are too small for a meaningful analysis,” the company said.
This is the first time that Amazon has published such data. As far as I can tell, few other large companies appear to have done anything similar, and I think Amazon is on a solid foundation here to ask its peers and competitors to follow suit.
“We hope that other large companies will also publish their detailed findings and case rates as it will help us all,” the company said in a statement. “This is not an arena for businesses to compete in – this is an arena for businesses to help each other.”
While we don’t have anything to compare Amazon to, it’s still worth taking a look at the actions Amazon has taken. Some of these may be more difficult to replicate in a smaller company. others are easier.
Of course, it is impossible to know which of the measures helped the most, but they included:
- Handing out face masks to employees (apparently over 100 million);
- Conducting temperature tests at locations around the world;
- “We are calling for improved cleaning practices at all of our locations,” to the point that “door handles, banisters, lockers, elevator buttons and touchscreens” should be cleaned every 90 minutes.
- “Introduction of comprehensive social distancing measures;”
- Inform employees about “every new case in their building”; and
- Sending some employees on paid vacation when they were simply exposed to other employees who tested positive (they say that number has decreased over time).
If you run a smaller business, I think the biggest takeout is one that I recommend often – and why I care a lot about what big public companies do. The point is that Amazon is able to research and study things on a wider scale than you possibly could, simply because of its size and size.
For example, Amazon said it “hired several of the world’s leading epidemiology and outbreak response doctors to work with our 5,000-strong global security team” to craft its plan. You may not have the resources to go into such a big effort.
While a skeptical eye may be appropriate, you can still beg, borrow, and steal the experience of a larger company that can.
The opinions expressed by Inc.com columnists here are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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