Joe Biden faces a number of urgent challenges in his early days as the new president of the United States, but one that will certainly receive high priority is to manage the continued implementation of the Covid-19 vaccine. The process so far has not been smooth and the states have vaccinated only a fraction of the expected population.
Amazon says it can help.
On a letter to the president obtained by NBC News, Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon’s global retail business, offered the company’s help in the vaccination effort. Although the proposal may be sincere, it is not entirely altruistic.
As Clark points out, Amazon has more than 800,000 employees in the United States, and most are essential workers who need to be present at Amazon’s service warehouses, data centers and Whole Foods stores to do their job. In his letter, he proposes that these workers receive the Covid-19 vaccine “at the appropriate time” and says that it will help in the effort.
It wouldn’t be the worst start to vaccinating more Americans, and Amazon, of course, has a clear interest in ensuring that its workforce remains healthy. At the beginning of the pandemic, the company sometimes struggled to prevent its workers from becoming ill, with some even promoting strikes because they felt that Amazon hadn’t done enough to keep them safe. The problems contributed to stumbling blocks in Amazon’s notoriously efficient operations. In October, the company revealed that almost 19,816 of its workers were positive or presumably positive for Covid-19.
Clark also said that Amazon could leverage its “operations, information technology and communication skills and experience” in the broader effort to vaccinate Americans. Some supply chain experts, like Nada Sanders, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University, suggested that Biden recruit Amazon’s logistics expertise to oversee vaccine distribution due to the company’s ability to quickly manage and deliver inventory. In the meantime, Amazon probably wouldn’t mind pleasing the Biden government, which continues to defend itself from antitrust investigations by federal agencies.
It is unclear how effective Amazon can be in accelerating the mass vaccination of Americans. Some of the factors that have slowed the process include staffing problems at local hospitals and technology issues that make it difficult for the federal government and states to share information efficiently. Amazon can also be great for taking toothpaste or groceries from a warehouse to the customer, but transporting vaccines requires specialized freezers at ultra-low temperature.
But if the Biden government decides it wants Amazon’s help, the company says it is ready.