Walmart, Home Depot Did The Right Thing On This Front To Flatten Coronavirus Curve; More Companies Should Follow

As more U.S. companies pivot to make things including sanitizers and masks to help combat the country’s escalating coronavirus crisis and relieve front-line medical supplies shortage, Walmart
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and Home Depot this week announced employee temperature checks among some other measures that more companies should also consider following suit. 

Walmart, the largest U.S. private employer, said Tuesday that it’ll begin taking employees’ temperatures as they report to work in stores and other facilities. The company said it’s also in the process of sending infrared thermometers to all locations. Walmart also said it will provide masks and gloves for employees who want to wear them.  

Home Depot, the top U.S. home-improvement retailer and a Dow member like Walmart, said Wednesday it’s giving thermometers to employees in stores and distribution centers so they can take their temperatures before reporting to work. Home Depot also said it’s installing a “Stop-Sale” on all N95 masks in stores and online to redirect all shipments to be donated to hospitals, healthcare providers and first responders around the country.

Amazon, the largest U.S. online retailer, reportedly also said it would begin screening employees for higher temperatures. 

As grocery stores and other U.S. retailers that still remain open shorten business hours, limit the number of customers in stores, or forbid returns or product exchanges and put away some self-serve areas for the time being, moves to screen temperatures of employees or offer face masks that don’t compete with the needs of strapped medical workers may be key to helping the U.S. flatten the coronavirus curve. 

The moves also come as U.S. Centers for Disease Control And Prevention is said to ponder whether to advise Americans to wear some sort of mask or covering to shield themselves against those who show no coronavirus symptoms yet but still may infect others—in a departure from its general guideline that only people who are sick should wear masks. 

With more U.S. companies grappling with how to do their part to help stem the U.S. healthcare crisis, a look at some of the success stories elsewhere also offers some hopeful roadmap of how U.S. retailers and others can go about navigating the crisis and eventually getting life and business back to some sense of normalcy. 

For instance, in Taiwan, a country that’s been widely noted for its success in keeping its coronavirus cases low despite the many odds against it, it’s not uncommon these days to see many merchants and other companies, large and small, offer to screen temperatures of employees, customers and other visitors at the front of stores or buildings, on top of offering hand sanitizers.

Meanwhile, local manufacturers have worked closely with the government to retrofit machines to ramp up production of masks (as well as sanitizers) to ensure there’s plenty of supplies to make mask wearing at low costs (about 15 cents apiece) a possibility for anyone who needs or wants. Many small businesses also came up with a wide array of innovative and fashionable cloth masks or mask covers to give consumers more options or to extend the life of surgical masks—all this without sacrificing the needs of the front-line medical workers.

While there’s continued global debate about what precise measure works best to stem the global crisis, U.S. cities, and retailers and other companies feeling the severe impact of store closings or reduced hours can take some learning away from the fact that in Taiwan, stores, restaurants and schools remain open and life for the most part goes on as normal despite the fact social-distancing measures also have hurt customer visits and donning masks in enclosed public places and mass transit system has become an accepted new way of life for now.

Walmart and Home Depot have taken the right first steps on employee temperature checking and other things, so have companies from New Balance to Anheuser-Busch that vow to make such supplies as masks and sanitizers to ease U.S. medical system’s supply crisis. But more can be done, and it’s a collective civic effort, including perhaps consumers’ changing their traditional negative perception when it comes to someone wearing masks, that could offer one possible answer to U.S. fast flattening the curve.

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