Ele.me Food Delivery Driver Tests Positive for COVID-19

A delivery driver of Alibaba-owned food delivery platform Ele.me tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, raising concerns about further spread of the disease in Beijing.

Apart from working for Ele.me, the 47-year-old deliveryman also picked up orders from Chinese e-commerce grocery startup MissFresh on June 19th and 20th. He had been delivering an average of 50 ordersa day until Saturday while visiting restaurants and grocery stores across the South and East of the city, local authorities said Tuesday.

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Ele.me said it had reported the employee’s activities of the past 20 days to city officials. The company is now giving nucleic acid tests to all delivery drivers in Beijing. All drivers who had been in close contact with the COVID-positive employee are being quarantined in centralized venues. The company said that all newly registered drivers in Beijing are required to pass nucleic acid tests before picking up online orders.

MissFresh said it closed all Ele.me-related services on the app and the store which the deliveryman had visited. The company also sealed off its inventory and sanitized its storehouse. All employees in the store are being quarantined and given nucleic acid tests while close contacts to employees are also being traced to ensure the safety of the families and the public as a whole.