Washington State Appeals to Starbucks for Help with Covid Vaccine Deployment

In a bid to boost the slowness of administration of Covid-19 vaccines, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said on Monday that the state had turned to Starbucks to help streamline logistics and settle down a new goal: to distribute 45,000 doses per day.

Starbucks has assigned 11 employees with expertise in labor and deployment, operations, and research and development to work full-time on vaccine distribution in its home state, the company said.

Inslee said the state is also organizing more than 2,000 pharmacies to administer vaccines and will set up drive-thru vaccination sites. Microsoft, another Seattle-based company, will also set up a vaccination site to perform 5,000 vaccinations per day, he said.

“It is a unique challenge for the United States and in every state to support a total mobilization of our resources,” said Inslee. “We did it during World War II when we built the Liberty ships here in Washington State. We have achieved production levels that no one could imagine because we have set ourselves ambitious goals.

The two vaccines approved for use in the United States are remarkably effective, but nationwide rollout has been slow since their launch a month ago. Nationwide, 12.2 million people have received a dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and only 1.6 million have received both doses, out of a total population of 330 , 8 million Americans. The Trump administration had promised to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020.

“We can’t think this is an acceptable pace,” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said. “So we need to dramatically step up this and accelerate progress.”

Inslee, a Democrat, said the state underestimated how difficult it would be to get all healthcare workers vaccinated quickly before moving on to other populations, and that fewer people signed up for the vaccine than planned.

“We have the same challenges as all states because we started on the hardest part – which is a small, fairly restricted group, which is healthcare workers,” he said. “And to identify them and direct them to the sites, it was a slower part of the process. We will now begin today to open this to people over the age of 65. It is much easier to communicate and coordinate this group to integrate them.

Starbucks began talks with Washington state about a partnership working on vaccine deployment earlier this month. Washington, which has a population of 7.6 million, only 31,581 people have received the two doses of the coronavirus vaccine, according to CDC data. This week, the state began allowing people over 65 to get vaccinated.

Starbucks employees assigned to vaccine distribution will use simulation modeling in the company’s computer system to find ways to speed up inoculations, according to the state and the company. The company and Washington hope the partnership will create an improved vaccine distribution network in the state’s 39 counties and 29 tribal nations.

President-elect Joe Biden said last week he would deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard to help set up immunization clinics across the country to meet the goal of administering 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his tenure.

Several states have started working with large drugstore chains to expand vaccine distribution to health workers. Although West Virginia has vaccinated more residents per capita than any other state by working with small independent pharmacies instead of the big chains.

Last week, several Democratic governors, including Inslee, said the Trump administration misled them about the existence of a national stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines for second doses. Inslee said the federal government told governors there was a strategic reserve.

Inslee said he’s much more convinced that a Biden administration will do a better job of distributing vaccines to states.

“I’m confident we’re going to have a much better relationship,” Inslee said. “That the federal government is not going to consciously deceive us like the last administration did. And so I feel very good about the future of our federal partnership.