Initially, nearly 4,000 employees were told to isolate themselves.
Thousands of Amazon employees in the UK have been told to isolate themselves after COVID-19 tests initially came back positive – but that turns out to be a false alarm.
A spokesman for the UK Department of Health and Social Care told ABC News that on February 13, about 3,853 Amazon employees were told they had tested positive, only to have the department say later in the evening that they were actually negative.
“NHS Test and Trace, which works closely with Amazon, quickly notified affected employees to let them know they did not need to isolate,” the spokesman said in a statement.
Amazon did not specify where employees worked in the UK or what their roles were.
The e-commerce giant has a workplace testing program, launched last fall, that uses PCR testing. The company reported positive cases to Public Health England on a daily basis, and the agency manages the transfer of the data to the National Health Service Test and Trace.
“We have communicated with our collaborators and partners to support them with the appropriate action steps, as instructed by the NHS,” Amazon said in a statement.
The UK is struggling with its own variant of the coronavirus which, according to health experts, is more contagious and spreads to other parts of the world. However, health data from the UK government indicate that cases and deaths from COVID-19 have decreased.
There have been 86,321 new cases reported in the country over the past seven days, a drop of nearly 28% from the previous week, according to the data. 4,345 deaths were reported last week, down 25% from the previous week, the British government said.
According to health data, 15,576,107 residents received their first vaccine shot on Monday night.