About 4,000 employees were initially told to isolate themselves.
Thousands of Amazon employees in the UK were told to isolate themselves after COVID-19 tests were initially positive again, 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 some 3,853 Amazon employees had been told positive, and that the department later that night said it really they had been negative.
“Working closely with Amazon, NHS Test and Trace 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 the affected employees in the UK worked or what their roles were.
The e-commerce giant has a workplace testing program, launched last fall, that uses PCR testing. The company has reported positive cases to Public Health England on a daily basis and the agency manages transfers of this data to the National Health Service Test and Trace.
“We have contacted our partners and partners to support them with the appropriate action steps, as per the NHS instructions,” Amazon said in a statement.
The UK is fighting its own variant of the coronavirus which according to health experts is more contagious and spreading to other parts of the world. British government health data, however, indicate that COVID-19 cases and deaths have declined.
According to the data, 86,321 new cases were registered in the country during the last seven days, a drop of almost 28% compared to the previous week. There were 4,345 deaths last week, a 25% drop from the previous week, the British government said.
As of Monday night, 15,576,107 residents had received the first vaccine, according to health data.