Amazon’s headquarters is virtually empty on March 10, 2020 in downtown Seattle, Washington. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon recommended all employees in its Seattle office work from home, leaving almost much of the city center.
John Moore | Getty Images
Amazon opens an emerging clinic in Seattle to administer Covid-19 vaccines.
The one-day clinic will be set up Sunday at Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle, the company announced Thursday at a news conference with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
“The truth is that Covid-19 has been a tragedy for the country, for the world and for Washington,” Jay Carney, Amazon’s chief spokesman, said during the press conference. “We look forward to helping save lives here in our home state, to rebuilding the economy with you and turning the page on Covid as quickly as possible.”
The clinic, which is being run in collaboration with Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, aims to administer 2,000 vaccines to eligible members of the public. Amazon provides the space to administer the vaccines, in addition to helping with logistics, an Amazon spokesman said.
Currently, the state of Washington allows people 65 and older to receive the vaccine, as well as people 50 and older living in a multigenerational household.
Beyond the emerging clinic, Carney said Amazon is working with Inslee and the state in their efforts to vaccinate against Covid-19. Amazon’s leadership is part of the Washington State Vaccine Coordination and Coordination Center, a public-private partnership between the state and several other companies, including Starbucks and Microsoft, aimed at increasing vaccines against Covid-19 .
The clinic comes when Amazon has appealed to President Joe Biden and other officials for its front-line workers to have priority access to the Covid-19 vaccine. The company wrote to Biden on Wednesday offering its operations, information technology and communications experience to assist in national vaccination efforts.
Carney said Amazon is ready to start administering vaccines to its front-line workers once doses are available. He added that the company has expanded coronavirus testing to its warehouses, having conducted “more than a million tests” at 650 locations in the United States.