Amazon’s headquarters is virtually empty on March 10, 2020 in downtown Seattle, Washington. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon recommended that all employees in its Seattle office work from home, leaving much of the center with almost no people.
John Moore | Getty Images
Amazon is opening a pop-up clinic in Seattle to administer Covid-19 vaccines.
The one-day clinic will be set up on Sunday at Amazon headquarters in downtown Seattle, the company announced on Thursday at a news conference with Washington Governor Jay Inslee.
“The truth is that Covid-19 was a tragedy for the country, for the world and for Washington,” Amazon spokesman Jay Carney said during the news 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 soon as possible.”
The clinic, which is being launched in partnership with the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, has a goal of administering 2,000 vaccines to eligible members of the public. Amazon is providing space to administer vaccines as well as assist with logistics, said an Amazon spokesman.
The state of Washington currently allows people aged 65 and over, as well as people aged 50 and over who live in a multigenerational home, to receive the vaccine.
In addition to the pop-up clinic, Carney said Amazon is working with Inslee and the state on their 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, with the goal of increasing Covid-19 vaccines.
The clinic arrives while Amazon calls on President Joe Biden and other officials to give its frontline employees priority access to the Covid-19 vaccine. The company wrote to Biden on Wednesday offering its operations, information technology and communications expertise to aid national vaccination efforts.
Carney said Amazon is ready to start administering vaccines to its frontline employees as soon as doses are available. He added that the company increased coronavirus testing at its warehouses, having performed “more than a million tests” at 650 locations in the United States