Peter Endig | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon closed a warehouse in northern New Jersey until Dec. 26 after asymptomatic coronavirus cases increased.
Employees at the Robbinsville Township, New Jersey plant, known as PNE5, were informed Saturday that the site would be closing temporarily, according to a report from CNBC.
Amazon employees will be paid for any services they lack while the facility is closed, Amazon spokesman Lisa Levandowski told CNBC in a statement.
“Through our proprietary COVID-19 testing program, we have detected an increase in the number of asymptomatic positive cases at our PNE5 facility in northern New Jersey and proactively closed the site until December 26,” said Levandowski. “This is exactly why we developed the program – to identify asymptomatic cases and ensure that we can take prompt action to prevent spread.”
Levandowski did not immediately respond to questions about the total number of cases at PNE5 or whether the building will be additionally cleaned during the closure.
Amazon announced in October that nearly 20,000 frontline workers had signed a contract with Covid-19 between March 1 and September 19. At the time, the company said the infection rate among workers was 42% lower than expected, compared to the overall population rate. in the U.S.
Amazon previously closed other facilities for a short time after it registered new cases of coronavirus. In March, Amazon temporarily closed a delivery station in Queens, New York after an employee tested positive for the corona virus. That month, it also closed a factory in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, after several workers there tested positive.
Most of Amazon’s warehouses have remained open during the pandemic as they were considered essential facilities, along with supermarkets, pharmacies and banks, among other businesses.
The company has previously said it has gone to great lengths to keep the facilities clean and ensure that employees follow necessary safety precautions, such as wearing a mask, using hand sanitizer, exercising social distance and others measures. Amazon has also launched test sites in a significant portion of its warehouses and said in October that it was running thousands of tests per day.
Still, US warehouse workers and deliverers have called on Amazon to do more to protect front-line workers, including reintroducing temporary pay increases and offering paid sick leave.
Amazon is one of many companies competing for their employees priority access to the coronavirus vaccine. Last week, Dave Clark, who heads Amazon’s retail operations, wrote a letter to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel asking that warehouse workers, Whole Foods employees, and data center workers “receive the Covid-19 vaccine as early as possible.”
On Sunday, the CDC panel voted that those over 75 and key frontline workers should be next in line for the coronavirus vaccine. Firefighters, police officers, teachers, grocers, public transportation and postal workers are among the essential workers in the level known as stage 1b. Other essential workers are expected to be included in the third wave of recipients.