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Amazon’s headquarters are 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 downtown area nearly empty of 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 at Amazon headquarters in downtown Seattle on Sunday, the company said Thursday at a press conference with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
“The truth is, Covid-19 has been a tragedy for the country, for the world and for Washington,” Amazon chief spokesperson Jay Carney said at the press conference. “We look forward to helping save lives here in our home country, rebuilding the economy with you and turning the page on Covid as quickly as possible.”
The clinic, which is launched in partnership with the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, aims to deliver 2,000 vaccines to eligible members of the public. Amazon is providing the space to administer the vaccines, as well as help with logistics, an Amazon spokesperson said.
Currently, Washington State allows people aged 65 and over, as well as people aged 50 and over living in multigenerational households, to receive the vaccine.
Beyond the pop-up clinic, Carney said Amazon is working with Inslee and the state on its Covid-19 vaccination 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 vaccinations against Covid-19.
The clinic comes as Amazon appealed to President Joe Biden and other officials to ensure its frontline workers get priority access to the Covid-19 vaccine. The company wrote to Biden on Wednesday offering its operations, information technology and communications expertise to help with national immunization efforts.
Carney said Amazon is ready to start administering vaccines to its frontline workers once the doses become available. He added that the company had stepped up testing for the coronavirus in its warehouses, after performing “over a million tests” at 650 sites across the United States.
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