Amazon has second coronavirus at Oregon warehouse
Published 9:30 am Monday, May 18, 2020
PORTLAND — Amazon reported another case of COVID-19 at its Troutdale warehouse Sunday, the second infection there in just over a week.
The online retailer notified Troutdale employees Sunday and said the infected person was last at the site on Friday, according to a copy of the message viewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Amazon sent a similar notification to employees about a separate coronavirus case in the same facility last Sunday.
“While this case is separate from the one reported earlier in the week, we continue to support the individual who is recovering while following guidelines from health officials and medical experts,” Amazon spokeswoman Brittany Parmley said in an email. “We also continue to take extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site.”
Amazon calls its $180 million, 855,000-square-foot Troutdale facility PDX9. It employed 2,000 there before the outbreak but has hired hundreds more to meet a surge of orders that accompanied the pandemic.
Amazon has continued operating throughout the coronavirus outbreak, delivering products even as many stores across the country shut down. Amazon’s warehouse workers have become increasingly vocal about concerns that working conditions don’t allow for adequate spacing, and The Verge and other news outlets have tallied seven deaths among the company’s workers.
Photos that Troutdale employees sent to The Oregonian/OregonLive this week showed employees standing close to one another, frequently without masks.
“Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees, and we expect to invest approximately $4 billion from April to June on COVID-related initiatives to get products to customers and keep employees safe,” Parmley wrote Sunday. “This includes spending more than $800 million in the first half of the year on COVID-19 safety measures, with investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of our facilities, less efficient process paths that better allow for effective social distancing, higher wages for hourly teams, and developing our own COVID-19 testing capabilities.”
Amazon says it has invested “hundreds of millions” of dollars to develop its own capacity to test employees. PDX9 in Troutdale was among the first sites where Amazon began piloting those internal tests last month.
It’s not clear whether the two Troutdale infections were uncovered through that testing or if those two workers were showing any symptoms of COVID-19.
Oregon has fielded more than 3,700 complaints of unsafe working conditions during the coronavirus outbreak, including more than 20 about Amazon.
But there have been only a few documented cases of large, workplace outbreaks in Oregon. Those include seafood processing plants in Astoria and a frozen food processor in Albany.