- Amazon cofounder and CEO Jeff Bezos issued his annual letter to shareholders on Thursday morning.
- In the letter, Bezos addresses the coronavirus pandemic directly.
- "A next step in protecting our employees might be regular testing of all Amazonians, including those showing no symptoms," he said. "Regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running."
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company plans to regularly test its hundreds of thousands of employees for coronavirus, including those who aren't showing symptoms, he said in an annual letter to shareholders published Thursday.
This year's shareholder letter focused mainly on Amazon's response to the coronavirus pandemic, including ways for the company to respond and protect its gargantuan workforce, most of whom work in essential roles at grocery stores or distribution centers.
"A next step in protecting our employees might be regular testing of all Amazonians, including those showing no symptoms," Bezos said. "Regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running."
In addition to calling for widespread, regular testing for employees across industries, Bezos said that Amazon would be developing its own tests, and has already started on that process.
It's a reiteration of recent statements Bezos has made regarding testing Amazon employees for the virus. The vast majority of employees work in Amazon's product distribution centers in roles considered essential and unable to work from home, and safety has become a major issue amid the coronavirus pandemic. Employees told Business Insider that they were afraid to go to work and called social distancing measures at warehouses "impossible." Workers at several Amazon distribution centers have tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least one has died.
Bezos said he hoped to make Amazon workplaces safer by regularly, repeatedly testing Amazon's entire workforce - a model he believes can be applied to society at large.
"For this to work, we as a society would need vastly more testing capacity than is currently available. If every person could be tested regularly, it would make a huge difference in how we fight this virus," he said. "Those who test positive could be quarantined and cared for, and everyone who tests negative could re-enter the economy with confidence."
To that end, Amazon is building out its own lab to facilitate testing.
"We have begun assembling the equipment we need to build our first lab and hope to start testing small numbers of our frontline employees soon," Bezos said in the letter. "We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it's worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn."
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