MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th April, 2020) The online retail giant Amazon is building a laboratory that will produce COVID-19 test kits to detect the disease among the company's employees, according to an official blog post.
"We have begun assembling the equipment we need to build our first lab ... and hope to start testing small numbers of our front line employees soon," Amazon said in a post on the company's Day One blog on Thursday evening.
The company said that its focus is on protecting the health and safety of its employees, particularly as the retailer continues to fulfill deliveries across the world during the global pandemic.
"Our employees are heroes helping people get the products they need delivered to their doorsteps, products they might not otherwise be able to get while maintaining social distancing," Amazon said.
Research scientists, program managers, and software engineers have all been tasked with establishing the Amazon laboratory, the company said, adding that the decision to construct the facility was motivated by the lack of a vaccine against the disease.
Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, who according to Forbes, is the world's richest man with a net worth of $124.7 billion. The company, which has its headquarters in the US city of Seattle, employs almost 800,000 people.
