The world’s biggest e-commerce giant Amazon employs about 798,000 work force worldwide. This pandemic has been a boom to some businesses like Amazon & other businesses like grocery stores, cleaning services. To meet the recent surge in demands due to the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic, Amazon announced hiring additional 100,000 new roles recently. There are reports that Amazon warehouse employees are infected in at least 64 of its warehouses have tested positive for covid-19 as of Thursday.

According to The Hill, ‘Amazon is developing a its own lab to test all of its workers to determine whether a person has the virus, as opposed to a blood test that could detect antibodies made by the immune system when a person is exposed’.

We have begun the work of building incremental testing capacity. A team of Amazonians with a variety of skills – from research scientists and program managers to procurement specialists and software engineers – have moved from their normal day jobs onto a dedicated team to work on this initiative.

The Amazon Blog

The blog post states that ‘until we have an effective vaccine available in billions of doses, high-volume testing capacity would be of great help, but getting that done will take collective action by NGOs, companies, and governments’.

Regular testing on a global scale across all industries would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running. But, for this to work, we as a society would need vastly more testing capacity than is currently available.

The Amazon Blog

Referring its its employees, the blog post writes – Amazon is focused on protecting the health and safety of our employees while continuing to serve people who need our services more than ever.

Global COVID-19 Diagnostics Initiative

According to the recent Amazon blog post, Amazon Web Services (AWS) business has also launched a global initiative with $20 million initial commitment to accelerate COVID-19 diagnostics, research, and testing for customers working on diagnostics solutions. According to the post, this program includes “participation from 35 global research institutions, startups, and businesses focused on tackling this challenge”.

Besides Amazon AWS, its reported that other technology companies including Rescale, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure are also offering computing resources without a cost to developers building test kits and vaccines for combating COVID-19.

Near 100K Deaths Globally

To-day’s Washington Posts highlights global health toll surpasses 100,000 citing the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus database. According to CNN reporting, The New York state has more coronavirus cases (161,807 until Friday ) than any other country. Spain has the second highest 157,022 cases followed by Italy with 143,626 cases. Citing the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, CNN updates writes “today is peak day for new deaths”.

COVID-19 Deaths Reaching Plateau?

There are reports of healthcare authorities from US & around the world quoted saying that the COVID-19 pandemic might have reached plateau. Dr Robert Redfield, Director of the Center of Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) is quoted saying

I think we’re coming to the peak … we can see the other side of the curve. Aggressive social distancing” techniques for lowering the expected mortality rate.

Robert Redfield, Director CDC, US

The coordinator of the White House coronavirus response Dr Deborah Birx is quoted:

“You can see for the first time that in the United States, we are starting to level on the logarithmic phase like Italy did about a week ago. And so this gives us great heart, that not only in specific places, but we are starting to see that change.

Dr. Deborah Birx (source: CNN Updates)

Others world leaders are also quoted saying the covid19 might have reached a peak.

We’re hopeful we’re beginning to see a plateau. But we need to keep complying with instructions. That’s the way the plateau will turn into a drop.

Stephen Powis, Medical Director National Health Service England

Germany records largest single-day death toll with 266 deaths marking the largest 24 hour increase in fatalities making total 2,373 deaths from covid-19. Chancellor Angela Merkel is quoted offering ‘cautious hope’ and urging people to continue to observe social distancing rules over Easter, adding that the number of people infected with the virus is declining slightly.

From CNN Daily Updates

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is quoted the commending Americans for taking steps to socially distance but warned that:

This is the end of the week — that famous week that we spoke about last weekend, It’s important to remember that this is not the time to feel that since we have made such important advance in the sense of success of the mitigation that we need to be pulling back at all.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (source: CNN Updates)