Technology

COVID-19 commanded an understandably outsized presence in Jeff Bezosannual shareholder letter last week. The Amazon exec laid out the companyplans for addressing the pandemic on a number of different levels, including building a testing lab for employees, along &with regular testing of all Amazonians, including those showing no symptoms.&

It has become a given that Amazon would test employees exhibiting fever and other COVID-19 symptoms. The company is, after all, one of the primary retail backbones for the U.S. and a number of other countries. And while the World Health Organization has stated that it doesn&t believe the virus can be transmitted via parcels, the virus has the potential to spread extremely quickly within a warehouse.

The notion of testing employees who don&t exhibit symptoms has been a less pressing question, however, due in no small part to the limited availability of testing kits. But as the WHO, CDC and other organizations have made abundantly clear, itentirely possible to carry the virus while remaining asymptomatic — a fact thatmade the novel coronavirus all the more scary.

Once testing becomes more readily available, it will be important to determine whether employers can, in fact, mandate testing, regardless of whether employees exhibit symptoms. There are important matters of both public safety and personal sovereignty to take into account.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been actively updating guidance for employers under the Americans with Disabilities Act:

The EEO laws, including the ADA and Rehabilitation Act, continue to apply during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they do not interfere with or prevent employers from following the guidelines and suggestions made by the CDC or state/local public health authorities about steps employers should take regarding COVID-19. Employers should remember that guidance from public health authorities is likely to change as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves. Therefore, employers should continue to follow the most current information on maintaining workplace safety.

Among the updated issues to deal with the pandemic is screening, which includes a temperature check. &During a pandemic, ADA-covered employers may ask such employees if they are experiencing symptoms of the pandemic virus,& the EEOC continues. &For COVID-19, these include symptoms such as fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, or sore throat. Employers must maintain all information about employee illness as a confidential medical record in compliance with the ADA.&

We put the question to Tricia Bozyk Sherno, counsel at Debevoise - Plimpton, who focuses on employment and general commercial litigation.

&For current employees, a medical inquiry or exam is permitted for current employees only if the employer has a reasonable belief that a particular employee will provide a ‘direct threat& due to a medical condition,& Sherno explains. &For new employees, the ADA permits employers to conduct medical examinations after a conditional offer of employment is made, but before an individual begins working, provided that all employees in the same job category must be subject to the same examination requirement. The primary ‘medical examination& considered by the existing EEOC guidance is temperature measurements. Available guidance does not yet address COVID-19 testing.&

The current rules around testing aren&t entirely clear under current guidelines, but expect that to continue to evolve as testing becomes more widely available and state governments begin to loosen stay-at-home restrictions. We can likely expect that the guidance will no longer apply once the pandemic is no longer deemed a threat. What remains consistent under ADA guidelines, however, is the illegality of firing an individual over a condition like COVID-19.

&The ADA prohibits discrimination against individuals with a disability and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for such individuals,& says Sherno. &Local and state laws may also provide additional protections for impacted employees.&

The new Extra Crunch Live series is taking flight this week. Today we&re talking to Cowboy Ventures& Aileen Lee and Ted Wang. This Thursday we&re keeping the parade of well-known investors coming, when Charles Hudson will join Natasha Mascarenhas and I for a deep-dive into all things pre-seed and seed.

Extra Crunch Live Episode 2: Charles Hudson will air at 3 PM PT/6 PM ET this Thursday. Important Note: Extra Crunch members will be able to ask their own questions live on the call.

Hudson has been a guest on Equity a few times and even popped up onstage at Disrupt. Why? Because hemade a number of notable investments and he has a penchant for explaining the seed venture market in useful, easy-to-grok terms.

Precursor Ventures, Hudsonfirm, has raised a number of funds, and filed paperwork to put together a $40 million third fund earlier this year. If closed, the new vehicle would be Precursorlargest to date. The firm previously raised two main funds, and one $10 million &opportunity& fund.

Hudson, along with senior associate Sydney Thomas and analyst Ayanna Kerrison, tends to invest in software, internet-focused and e-commerce companies, according to Crunchbase data. However, other data indicates that the firminvestment pace may have slowed in 2019 as the world unwittingly marched toward the new, COVID-19 era.

The new world we live in is precisely why we wanted to get Charles back for a chat. The last time we spoke with him Airbnb was still going public in 2020 on the back of a direct listing. We also chatted about which Y Combinator companies were the biggest. Now Airbnb been forced to borrow expensive capital, cut its valuation and is generally expected to delay its public debut. And Y Combinator is pulling back on its investing cadence.

A new world, achanged world.

Before we let you go, while prepping for our talk with Hudson, we discovered that Precursor put money into both payment firm Finixseed round and Series A, according to Crunchbase data. The startup later raised a Series B that would wind up being more complicated than it first seemed.

If you aren&t a member of Extra Crunch just yet, join up and don&t miss any of the next few months& worth of live chats that are going to be pretty damn cool.

You can find all the Zoom information below, as well as an AddEvent link to put the details directly onto your calendar.

See you soon!

Facebook confirmed this week that it will be pulling down a number of posts promoting stay-at-home protests. CNN was the first to report the news, which finds the social media giant pulling down events in a variety of different states, including California, Nebraska and New Jersey.

The news follows a spike in events across the country, as people have gathered to protest stay-at-home orders issued to combat the spread of COVID-19. Facebook confirmed that it has begun pulling some protests, citing defiance of state guidelines.

A spokesperson for the site told TechCrunch, &Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook. For this same reason, events that defy governmentguidance on social distancing aren&t allowed on Facebook .&

The companyactions will vary from location to location and event to event, determining whether they are in violation of specific guidance. A spokesperson told CNN they are working with state governments in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to determine whether to pull events. Among other determinations are whether protests call for social distancing among attendees where required.

Pictures from protests have become some of the most defining imagery over the past week, as attendees risk their health and the health of others in hopes of returning to some sense of normalcy a month in. Kentucky, notably, has seen a record number of COVID-19 cases following local protests.

&They seem to be very responsible people to me,& President Trump said of protesters during a press conference Friday, &but they&ve been treated a little bit rough.&

Movie ticketing company Fandango has agreed to buy Walmarton-demand video streaming service, Vudu, for an undisclosed sum. The video service today reaches more than 100 million living room devices across the U.S., including smart TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles and other over-the-top streaming devices, as well as Windows 10 and Mac computers, and iOS and Android mobile devices.

To date, the Vudu app on mobile has been installed more than 14.5 million times.

As a part of the agreement, Vudu will continue to power Walmartdigital movie and TV store on Walmart.com.

In addition, Walmart says Vudu customers will have uninterrupted access to their Vudu library. They&ll also continue to be able to use their Walmart login as well as their Walmart wallet to make purchases on Vudu, the retailer notes.

Details as to how Fandango will specifically leverage Vudu weren&t immediately disclosed, but the company today operates its four-year old movie streaming platform, FandangoNOW, which is an obvious integration point. The service has become a more essential business in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shut down theaters, significantly impacting Fandangodigital ticketing operations.

As a result, Fandango has put more efforts into its streaming business. For example, its stream of the newly released &Trolls World Tour,& which skipped its theatrical release due to COVID-19, was the most pre-ordered title in the streaming servicehistory, the most-rented digital title on opening day and the best-selling rental during its first three days of digital release, according to Deadline.

Fandango says that Vudu will allow it to scale that side of its business. It also plans to make offers to the majority of the Vudu team, when the deal closes.

&For us, ita combination of scale for our on-demand streaming service and the addition of Vudu talent,& a Fandango spokesperson said. &Vudu has a strong brand presence and customer base. So right now, we&re focusing on making sure that during this transition Vudu customers are taken care of and likewise on the FandangoNOW side. Both businesses will exist for the time being,& they noted.

Rumors that Walmart was shopping Vudu have been reported for many months. In February, Walmart was said to be in discussions with Comcast, which could have leveraged the platform for its newly launched streaming service, Peacock.

Walmartinterest in an online movie purchase and rental marketplace may have dwindled in recent months, as competition from other major players has ramped up: WarnerMedia is preparing HBO Max; NBCU just launched Peacock; and Apple TV+ and Disney+ are also live, and gaining traction. Thereeven a mobile-only service (Quibi). Elsewhere, therebeen significant consolidation in TV and video, with Viacom and CBS& merger completing in late 2019, with plans to beef up the CBS All Access streaming service. Viacom also purchased free service pluto.tv. And sports-focused streamer fuboTV just sold to FaceBank.

Meanwhile, Walmartoriginal plans for Vudu to be something of a competitor to Amazon Primevideo service never really panned out.

That said, Walmart had been recently working to release a slate of original content on Vudu alongside newshoppable ads, powered by technology from its joint venture with interactive content startup Eko. Its first original Vudu series, a reboot of &Mr. Mom,& debuted last September. Itunclear at this time to what extent those plans will continue at Fandango.

Fandango couldn&t yet comment on what role Vuduadtech or original content plays in the deal, beyond noting that everything live on the platform today would be included in the acquisition.

&We will continue to invest in areas where we have the greatest strength and are in the best position to serve our customers today and in the future,& a Walmart spokesperson noted in a statement, referencing the sale. &Pickup and delivery are great examples of how we&ve invested to bring digital and physical capabilities together to better serve our customers, by offering more choice and convenience. We&re focused on serving customers through these type of omni-retail experiences and we&re actively prioritizing our investments to maximize our strengths and serve them in new ways,& they added.

Walmart has seen a surge of interest in its e-commerce operations as a result of the pandemic. The companyfocus now is on hiring to fulfill consumer demand for online shopping and grocery. It has already hired 150,000 new workers and is hiring another 50,000, it said last week.

The Fandango acquisition is expected to close in the months ahead, says Walmart.

Updated, 4/20/20 4:00 PM ET with Fandango comments.

A new project designed to help address the growing need for ventilator hardware in order to treat the most serious cases of COVID-19 achieved an important milestone today, getting FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its units to be used and scaled for production. The hardware, dubbed &Spiro Wave,& is an emergency automated resuscitator that can be produced for less than $5,000, and that a team of engineers, doctors and researchers has already begun producing and delivering to care facilities.

The Spiro Wave essentially replicates the functionality of a manual resuscitator, a portable device that is typically operated manually to provide ventilation to emergency patients in case of emergency, but it automated the process, while still working with the same types of bags that are typically used with the manual version for easier sourcing of supplies.

Spiro Wave is based on MITopen-source E-Vent prototype design, which was created by researchers at the institution as one way to alleviate the shortage that resulted from the COVID-19 crisis. From that design, the team behind Spiro Wave, which includes the co-founders of Newlab, 10XBeta and Boyce Technologies, were able to go from design to production of their emergency ventilator in just a few weeks.

Manufacturing partner Boyce says that it can hopefully ramp production to as many as 500 per day, at its Long Island City production facility in Queens, and the first few hundred are already shipping out to facilities in NYC starting this week. The team is also now looking for international production scaling assistance with partners that are registered to produce medical devices with the FDA in order to increase supply even further.

The team behind this notes that itnot meant to replace a full-fledged ventilator, but that it will instead help alleviate the drain on those resources used in emergency care situations where a respirator would be just as effective, but where the manual version is impractical in terms of staffing and prolonged use. Like so many other measures granted EUA, this may not be an ideal replacement for fully FDA-approved equipment and therapies, but itan innovative, scalable solution that could mean big differences in the level of care at overburdened healthcare facilities.

Building a startup is hard enough. But COVID-19, our generationworst plot twist, gives new meaning to uncertainty and stress. No one had &pandemic& on their early-stage startupradar, which begs the question: How do you move your business forward in unprecedented times?

Ita huge challenge, and we&ve worked hard to find a way to help you keep momentum in the face of lockdowns and travel restrictions. Drumroll please — the Digital Startup Alley Package, a virtual exhibition for startups at Disrupt SF (September 14-16).

Accept no virtual substitutes. Disrupt is the OG of startup conferences, and TechCrunch has the resources and industry connections to replicate the Startup Alley experience as a truly world-class virtual event.

The Digital Startup Alley Package lets early-stage, pre-Series A startups disrupt from home for only $445. Digital Startup Alley kicks off early, and it runs through the end of the physical event in September. Place your startup in front of thousands of influential investors, technologists, customers and media — with months to pitch, demo, network and schedule meetings.

The Digital Startup Alley Package covers three people and includes:

CrunchMatch: TechCrunchAI-powered founder/investor networking platform. Save time, zero in and connect with the people who can move your business forward. Each startup will create a customizable profile, allowing startups to easily note their value add and business model to potential customers and investors.

Exceptional Pitch Coaching: Grab a brew and join TechCrunch editors for Pitchers and Pitches — an interactive opportunity to learn from the best. Whip your pitch into shape with the team that coaches the Startup Battlefield competitors.

Exposure to Investors: Exhibiting startups will be included in a deck available exclusively to investors attending Disrupt SF.

Exhibitor Guide: The definitive resource to Startup Alley and Disrupt SF — modified to reflect our digital exhibitors. Plus, you get access to the content included with a Disrupt Digital Pro Pass.

Exclusive Founder Webinars: All Startup Alley exhibitors will get exclusive access to the brightest industry minds to hear their current thinking on ways startups can adapt and thrive both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pro Tip: Come September, if you can exhibit at Disrupt SF in person, you can upgrade your package and still enjoy the benefits of Digital Startup Alley.

Remember, founders don&t quit — they adapt and move forward. Buy your Digital Startup Alley Package today.

TechCrunch is mindful of the COVID-19 issue and its impact on live events. You can follow our updates here.