The Amazon headquarters is virtually empty on March 10, 2020 in downtown Seattle, Washington. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon recommended that all employees in its Seattle office work from home, with much of the downtown area remaining nearly deserted.
John Moore | Getty Images
Amazon opens a pop-up clinic in Seattle to deliver Covid-19 vaccines.
The one-day clinic will be set up at Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle on Sunday, the company said at a press conference with Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Thursday.
“The truth is that Covid-19 was a tragedy for the country, the world and Washington,” said Jay Carney, Amazon’s top spokesman, during the press conference. “We are striving to save lives here in our home state, to rebuild the economy with you and to turn Covid on its head as quickly as possible.”
The clinic, which will open in partnership with the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, aims to deliver 2,000 vaccines to eligible members of the public. According to a spokesman for Amazon, Amazon offers the opportunity to administer the vaccines and support the logistics.
Currently, Washington state allows people age 65 and over, as well as people age 50 and over who live in multi-generational households, to receive the vaccine.
Beyond the pop-up clinic, Carney said Amazon was working with Inslee and the state on its Covid-19 vaccine effort. Amazon’s leadership is part of the Washington State Vaccine Command and Coordination Center, a public-private partnership between the state and several other companies, including Starbucks and Microsoft, that aims to promote Covid-19 vaccinations.
The clinic comes because Amazon President Joe Biden and other officials asked his frontline workers to get priority access to the Covid-19 vaccine. The company wrote to Biden on Wednesday offering its operations, information technology and communications expertise to help with the national vaccination effort.
Carney said Amazon is ready to give vaccines to its frontline workers as soon as doses become available. He added that the company stepped up coronavirus testing in its warehouses after running “over a million tests” in 650 locations across the US
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