It's Tuesday Ape. I'm Oscar Ramiras from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update. To get back to work, companies are trying to secure test for their workers. Amazon, for example, is looking for ways to test employees regularly, including building its own testing lab. But there's a big question of the best way to proceed, well employers need more diagnostic tests or would it be
better for antibody tests. Sarah Krause, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joins us for how employers want to ramp up their own testing capabilities. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Thanks for having me. Everybody on top of mind for everybody right now is how do we get back, how do we get the economy going again, and how do we get back to work? Companies are looking to get a bunch of tests for their workers. This has long
been part of the conversation. We need to ramp up all the testing, but companies are looking to get their own tests, test their own workers, maybe in house, but that also poses a lot of problems upfront. Right now, we hear a lot about Amazon in general mode or is they're looking for ways to test their employees. They're looking for methods to test them regularly, but like I said, there's just a lot of problems with ramping up privacy liability concerns as well. Sarah tell us a little bit
about this. So as companies try to figure out when and how to bring workers back to the office or back to the workplace, they want to make testing part of it. But it's really unclear how the best go about it, whether it's most valuable to do regular diagnostic tests, whether an antibody test is the best way forward. So there's a lot of questions about how best to proceed that companies are grappling with and how to act on
it once they know that about their workforce. Really it's all going to be dependent on the company too and their resources. You know, I mentioned Amazon they're looking to build their own testing lab. What does that look like. Is that a centralized lab are they're going to do a lot of mini labs in regional centers. That's a lot of logistical challenges going into it. There's a lot
of costs, there's a lot logistical challenges. You know, Amazon is obviously a uniquely large and well resourced company with the ability to begin now gathering the equipment it needs to build a COVID ninet team testing lab for its employees. I think some of the medical advisors that I talked to said, you might expect to see primary care facilities or on site health clinics that companies once had for
workers become testing facilities. But again, like the big overarching problem here is getting access to the test in the first place, and so we and others have reported that there have been shortages of swabs, shortages of the actual equipment needed to conduct the test once it's in the lab. So as of now, there are supply issues that are hindering tests even for basic frontline police, fire, municipal employees
healthcare workers. So overcoming that is pretty important step towards the broader public having wide access to testing a lot of loane individual employers and what the hierarchy is going to look like for that. Obviously, healthcare workers and as you mentioned, some of these other frontline first responders need these tests first, and they need to be able to ramp their portions of it first. So after that then does it become a bidding war for these types of
materials needed. I mean, there's a lot of questions that go into it. But it is very much part of the conversation. I think some polls or some companies that you guys have been talking to at the Wall Street Journal, there's over a quarter of the companies are looking for some type of testing for their employees, and there's disagreement
among executives even at large employers too. Is it most valuable to regularly test people for the coronavirus itself or is it better to conduct a broad antibody tests to see who has had it and may be immune to it. But even what immunity is in the context of this virus is unclear. So once you have it, does that to say you can't get it again? If you are
immune to it, how long does that immunity last. So there's a lot of unknowns about the coronavirus itself that make making a game plan about this really complicated, even more so than the logistics we've already talked about with actually sourcing the test. Let's talk a little bit about how some of this might look in actice. As you mentioned, some of these bigger companies can repurpose parts of their companies so they can do testing. But to do that testing.
We've all seen those videos of the swab that goes way in the back of the throat. I mean sometimes the person coughs because it tickles them the wrong way. So the person that is going to be doing this testing will have to be in full on gear. They'll have to be a trained professional obviously, but also full on ppe personal protective equipment. And that's kind of at a shortage too sometimes, so another challenge there. And then
going back to work once restrictions start to ease. Let's say we do have some of this testing in place, do you make an order saying, you know, older people, because they're more at risk, have to continue to work from home. These are some of the other issues that could arise from this just kind of uneven rollout. Nobody knows how to do it just yet. You know, in the past, there's been a pretty clear line in terms of what an employer can ask you or know about
you from a health perspective. You can't necessarily ask about pre existing conditions or genetic framework or pre existing medical conditions. And with this virus, that is something that dictates how high risk you are are not in some cases, so it starts to open up these really difficult conversations about employer versus employee privacy and what your coworkers want to be assured of before they feel comfortable coming back to work. So, you know, in the meantime, you have companies trying to
stagger shifts, you know, companies that are essential businesses. You know, we wrote about it today sort of making it up as they go, which is do you distribute master to your workforce? You try to practice social distancing both on the factory floor and in the bathroom. How do you really thinking through each corner of the workplace and to try to find some way to limit the spread In many ways, it's going to be a fundamental shift for a lot of companies in the way they operate going forward.
And the privacy concern has always been particularly interesting to me, just for the way you said. You know, if there's an outbreak in the office, people want to know who it is because they want to know if they've been in contact with that person. But at the same time, we have to protect their privacy and their health data. So these are all very tricky situations to navigate around, and it's a very emotional time for people to right
People are worried about their family and friends. And equally, some people are married to frontline workers who they all
go home together at the end of the day. And that is something that has always been the case, that your workforce may be married someone in a different profession that is higher risk than yours, and that becomes relevant in this conversation, but it's not something that an employer would typically have how to right to ask you about or factor into determining whether and when you can return to the office. Yeah, I mean, these are all the conversations are going to be hearing about how do we
get back and how do we do it? And unfortunately it's going to be different all over the world, from state to state, city to city, company to company. It's going to be an interesting time to see how we do it and then what combination of things gets it right. So we'll have to monitor all of that. Sarah Krause, reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramires and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.