Amazon is one of the largest companies in the country – and despite its defects and flaws, the company in general excels in logistics and scale distribution. Therefore, suggests Amazon, the new Biden administration should call the company to help increase the distribution of COVID-19 across the country.
“Amazon is ready to help you reach your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration,” wrote Dave Clark, head of Amazon’s consumer business, in a letter (PDF) to President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
The more than 800,000 Amazon employees should be in line for vaccines as quickly as possible, Clark noted, as individuals working in Amazon warehouses, AWS data centers and Whole Foods stores are essential workers who cannot work from home. The company struck a deal with a third-party healthcare company to administer vaccines on-site at Amazon-owned facilities, added Clark – if they could only get vaccines to administer.
“We are prepared to act quickly as soon as vaccines are available,” wrote Clark. “In addition, we are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology and communication skills and experience to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts. Our scale allows us to make a significant impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we are ready to help you in this effort. “
“A gloomy failure”
There are two COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the United States: one from Pfizer / BoiNTech and one from Moderna. Federal regulators granted permission for both to be distributed and used in mid-December, more than a month ago, but the launch was difficult, to say the least.
A week after the Pfizer vaccine became available, state leaders complained that they were not receiving the doses promised by the federal government. The Trump administration blamed the manufacturers, but Pfizer issued a statement at the time saying it had “millions” of doses ready to be shipped, but had not received any instructions from the federal government on where to send them.
Before the end of December, the Trump administration signed an agreement with Pfizer for an additional 100 million doses of the vaccine, bringing the total number of doses that the United States had ordered, between the two manufacturers, to about 400 million. Getting these doses to materialize, however, remains a challenge, and last week The Washington Post reported that the vaccine stock, designed to secure a reserve for second doses, had already dried up.
“The launch of the vaccine in the United States has been a total failure so far,” said President Joe Biden in a speech five days before taking office. He promised to do everything in his power to speed up the delivery of the vaccine during his administration, with the stated goal of reaching 100 million doses administered in the first 100 days of his term.
“The supply is not where it should be,” Biden acknowledged in his comments at the time, but his policy suggestions should mean that “as vaccines become available, they will reach more people who need them.”