Almost 4,000 employees were initially instructed to isolate themselves.
Thousands of Amazon employees in the UK were told to isolate themselves after the COVID-19 tests initially tested positive – but it turned out to be a false alarm.
A spokesman for the UK Department of Health and Welfare told ABC News that on February 13, about 3,853 Amazon employees were told they had tested positive, just so that the department, later that night, said the test was negative.
“Working closely with Amazon, the NHS Test and Trace quickly notified affected employees to let them know that they did not need to be isolated,” the spokesman said in a statement.
Amazon did not specify where in the UK the affected employees worked or what their duties were.
The e-commerce giant has a workplace test program launched last fall that uses PCR testing. The company has reported positive cases to Public Health England daily, and the agency manages transfers of that data to the National Health Service Test and Trace.
“We communicate with our associates and partners to support them with the appropriate action steps, as instructed by the NHS,” said Amazon in a statement.
The UK is battling its own variant of the coronavirus, which health experts say is more contagious and is spreading to other parts of the world. British government health data, however, indicates that COVID-19 cases and deaths are on the decline.
There were 86,321 new cases registered in the country in the last seven days, a drop of almost 28% compared to the previous week, according to the data. There were 4,345 deaths recorded last week, a 25% drop from the previous week, the British government said.
As of Monday night, 15,576,107 residents had received their first vaccine, according to health data.