WALMART NOTES brisk online, grocery-order sales.

With many people choosing to stay home for fear of exposure to the coronavirus, Walmart Inc., like other retailers, is seeing an increase in online shoppers using their grocery pickup and delivery services.

Walmart said in a brief statement Tuesday that because of the high volume of orders, even as customers are still crowding its stores to stock up on necessities, the retailer is filling pickup and delivery orders even faster than usual.

“We’re offering time slots to customers for as soon as the same day,” the company said. “This is a shorter window than we typically offer, but it will allow us to better serve our customers during this busy time.”

The Bentonville-based retailer had nearly 3,200 grocery pickup locations nationwide as of the end of its fiscal year on Jan. 31, and more than 1,600 delivery locations. Other delivery options include its subscription service called Delivery Unlimited, which is available at 1,400 stores in 200 metro areas. For $98 a year or $12.95 per month, subscribers can get unlim

ited free grocery delivery.

The company has more than 5,300 stores in the U.S., including Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and its members-only warehouse division, Sam’s Club. It employees about 1.5 million workers nationwide.

Walmart’s e-commerce rival Amazon.com also has ramped up its order fulfillment efforts to meet increased demand. Amazon said Monday that it plans to hire 100,000 full- and parttime workers in addition to the 800,000 it had as of Dec. 31. The new positions will be spread across its U.S. fulfillment centers and delivery network.

Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, said in a blog post that the company knows “many people have been economically impacted as jobs in areas like hospitality, restaurants and travel are lost or furloughed as part of this [pandemic] crisis. We want those people to know we welcome them on our teams until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back.”

Clark said Amazon also is raising pay through April “to recognize our employees who are playing an essential role for people at a time when many of the services that might normally be there to support them are closed.” U.S. workers will get an extra $2 per hour on top of Amazon’s current pay rate of $15 an hour or more depending on the region, Clark said.

The temporary pay raises will also apply to Amazon workers in Canada, the U.K. and many European Union countries, Clark said.

Amazon entered the grocery market in 2017 when it bought the supermarket chain Whole Foods Market. Amazon offers grocery delivery through its subscription services Prime Now and Amazon Fresh in select metropolitan areas.

A banner on the Amazon Fresh website Tuesday informed customers that “inventory and delivery may be temporarily unavailable due to increased demand.”

Shoppers are instructed to confirm availability at checkout.

Target Corp. offers its online shoppers grocery delivery through its subsidiary Shipt, as well as in-store pickup counters and curbside pickup for online orders. The retailer also has increased staffing levels to handle demand for these popular services, Target chief executive officer Brian Cornell said in a note to customers on March 10.

Based in Minneapolis, Target has nearly 1,900 stores nationwide.