Buoyed by the surge in demand as people stayed home owing to the pandemic globally, net sales increased 26 per cent to $75.5 billion for the e-commerce giant in the first quarter of 2020, compared with $59.7 billion in the first quarter last year. Net income, however, decreased to $2.5 billion in the first quarter, compared with net income of $3.6 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said the company expects to spend $4 billion or more on COVID-19-related expenses in the second quarter. “Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion, and perhaps a bit more, on COVID-related expenses, getting products to customers and keeping employees safe,” Bezos said in a statement in April.

This includes investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of facilities, less efficient process paths that better allow for effective social distancing, higher wages for hourly teams, and hundreds of millions to develop its own COVID-19 testing capabilities. “There is a lot of uncertainty in the world right now, and the best investment we can make is in the safety and well-being of our hundreds of thousands of employees,” said Bezos.