Amazon.com Inc is testing its frontline staff in Britain for COVID-19 variants and feeding the data to public health officials, including in hot spots where a strain first found in India is spreading fast.
The retail giant opened COVID-19 testing labs in the UK and the US last year to provide voluntary testing for staff and can now also test for variants in Britain, where scientists have pioneered sequencing coronavirus genomes.
Aided by a rapid vaccine rollout, Britain is on the verge of reopening its economy after months of lockdowns, but the Delta variant first found in India has spread, including in areas where Amazon has its lab and some fulfillment centers.
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Luke Meredith, director of the Amazon Diagnostic Laboratory in Britain, said the company was open to offering the same service in the US, and did not rule out making its testing program available to the UK public in the future.
‘LEARNING PHASE’
“It’s very important that we acknowledge the fact that variants can transmit in different ways, they have different responses to vaccines, they may have different impacts on people’s health,” he said. “This is a learning phase.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed 3.7 million people, forcing governments, companies and society to rethink how people work, travel and socialize.
Some initial studies show the Delta variant spreads more easily.
Amazon’s testing is available to about 30,000 frontline staff in Britain, working in warehouses and logistics. The lab has processed more than 900,000 tests since it opened in September last year, including from its sites in Europe.
Meredith, who had worked for the WHO and the University of Cambridge, said that Public Health England had been eager to receive the additional data to help track the spread of variants.
PRIORITIES
Asked if Amazon would make the testing facilities available to the public in Britain, where the cost of private testing can run into hundreds of dollars for international travel, Meredith said it was too soon to say.
“I don’t think we can rule anything out at this point in time. That’s a decision that will have to be made, but for now we just want to focus on our staff,” Meredith said.
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