With the worsening of the COVID-19 situation in India and Canada, Amazon.com Inc. is pausing plans for its annual sale on Prime Day. Nevertheless, this won’t impact Prime Day in the U.S., which is scheduled for an undisclosed day in June.
India has been brutally shaken by the pandemic in recent weeks, accounting for more than 46 percent of the COVID-19 cases in the world in the past week. Moreover, The country has crossed over 20 million cases of COVID-19 as of this week. Media reports have said the crematoriums and burial grounds have become overwhelmed with the bodies of people who died from the deadly disease. As a result of which, many states in the country have imposed rigorous restrictions, lockdowns, and curfews. On the other hand, Canada saw new COVID-19 infections in April rising higher than the rates in the U.S. for the first time since the beginning of the global crisis. And the country has seen slower vaccination rates as compared to the U.S.
“Based on the increasing impact of Covid-19 in Canada, and the importance we place on protecting the health and safety of our employees and customers, we will pause plans for Prime Day 2021 in Canada,” said the email, sent to Amazon sellers Thursday. The Seattle-based company, in an email, confirmed Prime Day would also be postponed in India, which was reported earlier by CNBC.
Even last year with a massive surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, Amazon was forced to postpone Prime Day, which is formed in 2015 as a way to offer broad swathes of discounts. It rescheduled the event for October 2020 instead of its usual July date.
This year, though, things will still be different from other years in that the eCommerce giant plans to hold Prime Day in June, according to CNBC. It said the reasoning for that is June would likely be “better for customers, sellers and vendors,” who may be vacationing in July now that the pandemic has receded in several parts of the world.
Recode reported in April that Prime Day would be a multi-day event in June, and, as usual, would remain exclusive for only Prime members. Recode speculated that the move to June rather than July was at least partly influenced by Wall Street, with Amazon execs looking to boost sales in the second quarter of the year to help with comparisons year over year.
Related: Amazon to prepone its annual Prime Day to kick start its sales