Amazon’s headquarters will be virtually empty on March 10, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon has advised all employees in its Seattle office to work from home, leaving much of downtown empty.
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Amazon is opening a pop-up clinic in Seattle to administer Covid-19 vaccines.
The one-day clinic will be set up Sunday at Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle, the company announced Thursday at a news conference with Jay Governor of Washington.
“The truth is that Covid-19 has been a tragedy for the country, for the world and for Washington,” Amazon chief spokesman Jay Carney told the news conference. “We are eager to help save lives here in our home state, to rebuild the economy with you and to flip Covid as quickly as possible.”
Launched in partnership with Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, the clinic aims to administer 2,000 vaccines to eligible members of the public. An Amazon spokesman said Amazon provided the space to administer the vaccines as well as logistical assistance.
Currently, the state of Washington allows people aged 65 and over, as well as people aged 50 and older living in a multigenerational household, to receive the vaccine.
In addition to the pop-up clinic, Carney said Amazon is working with Inslee and the state on the 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, aimed at increasing Covid-19 vaccinations.
The clinic comes when Amazon appealed to President Joe Biden and other officials to get its front-line workers to access the Covid-19 vaccine. The company wrote to Biden on Wednesday, offering its expertise in operations, information technology and communications to help with national vaccination efforts.
Carney said Amazon is ready to administer the vaccines to its front-line workers as soon as doses become available. He added that the company has increased coronavirus testing in its warehouses after conducting ‘more than a million tests’ on 650 sites in the US.