Amazon’s headquarters will be virtually empty in downtown Seattle, Washington on March 10, 2020. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon recommended that all employees at the Seattle office work from home, leaving much of the downtown area almost empty.
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Amazon opens a pop-up clinic in Seattle to administer Covid-19 vaccines.
The one-day clinic will be set up at Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle on Sunday, the company announced at a press conference with Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Thursday.
“The truth is, Covid-19 has been a tragedy for the country, for the world and for Washington,” Amazon’s top spokesman Jay Carney said at the news conference. “We’re eager to save lives here in our home state, to rebuild the economy with you and to turn the page on Covid as soon as possible.”
The clinic, which is being launched in partnership with Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, aims to deliver 2,000 vaccines to eligible members of the public. Amazon provides the space to administer the vaccines and also helps with logistics, an Amazon spokesperson said.
Currently, the state of Washington allows people 65 and older, as well as people 50 and older who live in multi-generational households, to receive the vaccine.
In addition to the pop-up clinic, Carney said Amazon is working with Inslee and the state on its Covid-19 vaccine efforts. 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, aimed at boosting Covid-19 vaccinations.
The clinic comes as Amazon has appealed to President Joe Biden and other officials for its front-line 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 aid in national vaccination efforts.
Carney said Amazon is ready to administer vaccines to its frontline workers as soon as doses are available. He added that the company has stepped up coronavirus testing in its warehouses, with “more than a million tests” at 650 locations in the US.