Amazon yesterday offered to assist the newly inaugurated United States President Joe Biden’s administration to distribute vaccines in order to meet the President’s goal of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days. In a letter addressed to the President directly by Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, he said “As you begin your work leading the country out of the Covid-19 crisis, Amazon stands ready to assist you in reaching your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration.”
He noted that as the second largest employer in the United States with over 800,000 workers, it is ready to assist the new administration in achieving its objectives. He said the government can leverage on its existing infrastructure in the Cloud computing and its subsidiaries to facilitate vaccinations in those 100 days. He said they can leverage on the tools in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and communication tools they have to help the administration.
On their own part, he added that Amazon had reached an agreement with a third-party health-care provider to administer vaccines on site at the company’s warehouses.
Amazon says many of its workers cannot work from home and as such should be prioritised when it comes to vaccination. In fact Clark wrote to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel asking that its front line staff be prioritised in the vaccination efforts of the Trump administration. We don’t know how that turned out for them. Hundreds of thousand of Amazon workers worked through the pandemic when many were under lockdown delivering items to homes. Many were in data centres making sure our communications stayed up as demand for resources including connectivity rose because billions of people were locked down at the same time and had to communicate with each other.
Here’s a copy of the letter below;
Dear President Biden,
Congratulations to you and Vice President Harris on your inauguration. As you begin your work leading the country out of the Covid-19 crisis, Amazon stands ready to assist you in reaching your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration.
As the nation’s second largest employer, Amazon has over 800,000 employees in the United States, most of whom are essential workers who cannot work from home. We are proud of the role our employees have played to help customers stay safe and received important products and services at home, which is critical for people with underlying medical conditions and those susceptible to complications from Covid-19. The essential employees working at Amazon fulfillment centers, AWS data centers, and Whole Foods Market stores across the country who cannot work from home should receive the Covid-19 vaccine at the earliest appropriate time. We will assist them in that effort.
We have an agreement in place with a licensed third-party occupational health care provider to administer vaccines on-site at our Amazon facilities. We are prepared to move quickly once vaccines are available. Additionally, we are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts. Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against Covid-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort.
Since the beginning of this crisis, we have worked hard to keep our workers safe. We are committed to assisting your administration’s vaccination efforts as we work together to protect our employees and continue to provide essential services during the pandemic.
