Mr. Bezos has been “incredibly focused on this and is participating in, and driving, our leadership meetings” for the response, Jay Carney, the company’s senior vice president for corporate affairs, said in a March 31 interview.

As the coronavirus gripped the country, cases appeared among workers in Amazon’s warehouses. By mid-March, Amazon’s vaunted logistics operations were breaking; customers wanted more products just as fewer warehouse workers showed up for their shifts, afraid to risk getting the virus or left to care for children whose schools had closed.

Mr. Bezos and the other executives soon approved plans to stop accepting low-priority items into warehouses and to delay customer shipments of other items that Amazon considered low demand, according to three people briefed on the changes.

Mr. Bezos helped decide which features to remove from the Amazon website to reduce customer demand, such as burying its popular page promoting daily deals, one of the people said. He also approved delaying Prime Day, the company’s summer shopping extravaganza.

Still, workers and lawmakers increasingly called for more precautions at the warehouses. On March 21, Mr. Bezos sent a rare letter to all of Amazon’s employees, which the company immediately posted on its blog. He said the company had ordered millions of face masks for workers, though few of those orders had been filled.

“My list of worries right now — like yours I’m sure — is long,” he wrote.

Waiting weeks to address his employees was a mistake, particularly when Seattle had an early outbreak of the virus, Mr. George said.

“You need to be out there early, every day, and talking to your people,” he said. “If the people are risking themselves, you need to be there with them.”