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Amazon workers tested positive for tuberculosis at one of its UK warehouses, it has been revealed – sparking calls for the site to be closed.
The retail giant confirmed 10 staff tested positive for non-contagious TB at its centre in Coventry last September.
Confirming the outbreak, Amazon said ‘a small number’ of workers had been diagnosed with the disease, but they were ‘no longer infectious’.
It added that no other cases had been identified and the site was running as normal, but an ‘expanded screening programme’ was rolled out ‘as a precaution’.
TB is a bacterial infection that usually affects the lungs. While curable, it can cause irreversible damage if left untreated.
It is frequently called a ‘Victorian disease’ due to its prevalence during the Victorian era, claiming the lives of approximately four million people in the 1850s to 1910.
An Amazon spokesman said: ‘Last year, a small number of people who work at our Coventry fulfilment centre tested positive for TB.
‘In line with best practice safety procedures, we immediately followed guidance from the NHS and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and made all employees potentially affected aware of the situation.
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry have tested positive for tuberculosis
The GMB trade union has previously held strikes at the site over pay and working conditions and has about 700 members at the warehouse
‘Those affected by TB responded well to treatment and are no longer infectious, posing no onward risk.
‘As a precaution, we are running an expanded screening programme with the NHS this month.
‘To date, no additional cases have been identified, and our site continues to run as normal.
‘We will continue to follow guidance from the experts at UKHSA and the NHS, who are monitoring the situation, and would respectfully remind public organisations of the need for responsible communications where matters of public wellbeing are concerned.’
About 3,000 staff work at the site, including about 700 GMB members.
The GMB has called for the site to remain closed until infection control measures have been put in place to prevent any further spread of the disease.
GMB senior organiser Amanda Gearing said: ‘Amazon is putting all workers, site visitors, and the local and wider communities at risk of exposure to a serious infectious disease.
‘Coventry Amazon risks becoming the engine room of a mass TB outbreak of a scale not seen for decades.
‘Immediate and decisive action – including the temporary closure of Amazon Coventry – is required to prevent this.’
For thousands of years the disease was the biggest health threat in the world.
It was previously called phthisis, consumption and the White Plague.
Despite advances in medical care, the World Health Organisation considers it the deadliest infectious disease on the planet, killing 1.25million people in 2023.
In 2024, the number of people who contracted the disease in the UK rose by 13.6 per cent to 5,490 people.
Some people can have TB in their body but experience no symptoms of the disease – a condition known as latent TB.
A GMB sign outside the Amazon warehouse in Coventry during a walkout in March 2024
This can not be spread to others but can turn into active and contagious TB if untreated.
The Coventry warehouse has been the site of industrial action for GMB before.
In March 2024, workers walked out of the Coventry base over pay, working conditions and to get the online retail giant to ‘formally recognise their union’.
By September that year, Amazon agreed to a pay rise for thousands of staff.
