Zomato denies viral rumours that rider tested positive for Covid-19

The person who tested positive worked with a restaurant and some of the orders delivered by the restaurant staff were placed on Zomato, a spokesperson said

Zomato has denied one of its riders tested Covid-19 positive in response to a message going viral on WhatsApp and gaining traction on Twitter.

The person who tested positive worked with a restaurant and some of the orders delivered by the restaurant staff were placed on Zomato, a spokesperson said early Thursday morning.

Zomato deploys its own riders to deliver restaurant orders while some restaurants prefer to have their own delivery staff fulfil orders.

“We’ve been made aware today that a restaurant’s employee, who has been recently tested positive for COVID-19, had delivered food in the past to a few customers in the Malviya Nagar area in Delhi. All these customers have already been contacted by government authorities,” Zomato said in an emailed statement.

Some of these orders were made through Zomato but were fulfilled by the restaurant’s own staff, the company said.

The message doing the rounds claims that on 11th April, a food delivery made by a “Zomato guy” at an address in Shivalik, Malviya Nagar, has led to the family at the said address being quarantined after the delivery person tested positive for Covid-19.

Zomato further said that none of the other delivery fleet of the restaurant has tested positive for coronavirus, and as a precaution, the restaurant has suspended operations.

“Our riders risk their health while providing essential services like cooked food delivery and grocery delivery…We also believe that none of our riders should and would knowingly keep working if they knew they were infected with COVID-19,” the Zomato spokesperson added.

On Wednesday, the online food ordering platform rolled out a feature which allows users to track the body temperature of their food delivery partner on the app. Available on the order tracking screen, this feature will capture the temperature checked before the delivery partner picks up an order for delivery.