Walmart to start taking workers' temperatures, providing gloves and masks

A Walmart store in Florida.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Walmart announced on Tuesday it will soon start checking workers' temperatures when they report for their shifts and will make masks and gloves available for their use.

"We know not only our associates, but our customers as well will be more comforted by the fact that they have access to the more general medical mask," Walmart executive vice president Dan Bartlett said.

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Retail workers at stores like Walmart have to show up for work during the coronavirus pandemic, as they are considered essential. Many are worried about exposure to the coronavirus, and are afraid they might bring it home to their families. Lily, a Walmart employee in New Mexico who lives with her elderly parents, told NPR she doesn't "know how to weigh the responsibility of going to work with the responsibility of making sure that my parents are safe. I'm scared that, going every day to work, I am putting them in danger."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.