Ocado purchases coronavirus test kits for workers
Ocado has bought 100,000 Covid-19 test kits for its grocery packers and delivery drivers.
It has stumped up £1.5 million for these, with 40,000 already delivered and a further 60,000 to come.
Ocado did not state from which company it had bought the tests. It said that it would hand them over to the NHS (where many frontline workers have been critical of a lack of vital equipment) if required.
‘Nobody will starve’
As the coronavirus intensifies, Ocado has been struggling under increased pressure from customers trying to order food online, prompting its Chairman, Stuart Rose, to call on Brits to stop stockpiling groceries.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “There is no shortage of food. Nobody will starve. There is a £1 billion more food in people’s larders than there was a couple of weeks ago. What are they doing with it? How much do you need to eat? How much do you need to store away?”
Ocado CEO Melanie Smith commented last week: “We currently have 10 times more demand for our services now than we did before the outbreak began, and with every announcement, we see a further extraordinary surge of customers to Ocado.com. No matter how hard we work, we will not have enough capacity to serve the unprecedented levels of demand.”