Amazon is testing its front-line employees in Britain for coronavirus variants and feeding the information to public well being officers, together with in hotspots the place a pressure first present in India is spreading quick.
The retail large opened COVID-19 testing labs within the UK and the United States final 12 months to offer voluntary testing for employees and may now additionally take a look at for variants in Britain, the place scientists have pioneered sequencing coronavirus genomes.
Aided by a fast vaccine rollout, Britain is on the verge of reopening its financial system after months of lockdowns however the Delta variant first present in India has unfold, together with in areas the place Amazon has its lab and a few fulfilment centres.
Luke Meredith, director of the Amazon Diagnostic Laboratory in Britain, mentioned the corporate was open to providing the identical service within the United States, and didn’t rule out making its testing programme obtainable to the UK public in future.
“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 instructed Reuters. “This is a learning phase.”
The coronavirus pandemic has killed 3.7 million individuals, forcing governments, firms, and society to rethink how individuals work, journey and socialise. Some preliminary research present the Delta variant spreads extra simply.
Amazon’s testing is out there to round 30,000 front-line employees in Britain, working in warehouses and logistics. The British lab has already processed greater than 900,000 assessments because it opened in September, together with from its websites in Europe.
Meredith, who beforehand labored for the World Health Organization and the University of Cambridge, mentioned Public Health England had been desperate to obtain the extra knowledge to assist monitor the unfold of variants.
Asked if Amazon would make the testing services obtainable to the general public in Britain, the place the price of personal testing can run into a whole lot of kilos for worldwide journey, Meredith mentioned it was too quickly 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,” he mentioned.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
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