In a letter to President Joe Biden, Amazon.com Inc. Wednesday to use its massive logistics resources to help distribute COVID-19 vaccines in the US.
“Amazon is ready to help you achieve your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration,” Dave Clark, Amazon’s CEO for global consumer affairs, said in the letter.
Biden has vowed to rapidly ramp up the national coronavirus response and implement a nationwide vaccination program. The Trump administration had left it to states to handle the rollout of vaccinations individually, which led to numerous problems.
“We are ready to use our business, information technology and communications capabilities and expertise to support your administration’s vaccination efforts,” wrote Clark. “Our scale allows us to make an immediate, meaningful impact in the fight against COVID-19, and we are ready to help you with this.”
Amazon AMZN,
said it has entered into an agreement with a third-party healthcare provider to offer vaccinations to its more than 800,000 employees in the US, and “is ready to act quickly once vaccines are available.”
Aside from general public health considerations, effective vaccine rollout is critical to Amazon’s operations: most employees are classified as ‘essential’ workers who cannot work from home, and there have been over 19,000 Amazon employees as of September. infected with the corona virus in the US, according to Reuters.
It was unclear whether Amazon had previously provided similar assistance to the Trump administration. Former President Donald Trump has had a longstanding feud with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.