The United States Postal Service confirmed that two Charlotte employees have COVID-19. One employee tested positive at the location on Scott Futrell Drive Charlotte, NC and a second employee that tested positive works at the West Pointe Drive facility in Charlotte.
USPS officials said they believe the risk is low to employees who work at the facilities. However, the Coronavirus can live on surfaces for 24 hours or more. Shipping and delivery services have increased exponentially since malls, stores, and many other businesses have been ordered to shutdown during the Coronavirus pandemic.
7 Amazon employees in the Charlotte area have already tested positive for the Coronavirus.
As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, the USPS is asking federal lawmakers for as much as $89 billion.
Three USPS employees who work at facilities in the Jacksonville, FL area have tested positive for the Coronavirus too. Two U.S. Postal Service employees in Harrisburg, PA tested positive for COVID-19.
USPS says they are abiding by the following protocols and procedures:
- Ensuring millions of masks, gloves and cleaning and sanitizing product are available and distributed to more than 30,000 locations.
- Reinforcing workplace behaviors to ensure that contact among employees and with customers reflects the best guidance regarding healthy interactions, social distancing, and risk minimization. Measures at retail facilities and mail processing facilities include signage, floor tape and “cough/sneeze” barriers.
- Changing delivery procedures to eliminate the requirement that customers sign Mobile Delivery Devices for delivery. For increased safety, employees will politely ask the customer to step back a safe distance or close the screen door or door so that they may leave the item in the mail receptacle or appropriate location by the door.
- Updating leave policies to allow liberal use of leave and give employees the ability to stay home whenever they feel sick, must provide dependent care, or any other qualifying factor under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, including providing 80 hours of paid leave to non-career employees for issues related to COVID-19, and have expanded the definition of sick leave for dependent care for covered employees to deal with the closures of primary and secondary schools across the country.
- Expanding the use of telework for those employees who are able to perform their jobs remotely.
