As you have probably heard by now, on Wednesday, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) sent a letter to the new US President, Joe Biden, offering to “help you achieve your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your government.”
On the one hand, the company highlighted its “more than 800,000 employees in the United States, most of whom are essential workers,” as an excellent place to start vaccinating. At the same time, with 800,000 employees at its disposal, an extensive logistics network and a number of retail and warehouse properties to work from, Amazon said it was “willing to move fast” to distribute vaccines.
Today, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) raises his hand and declares that he can do the same.
Image source: Walmart.
The headline of Walmart’s blog post from its executive vice president for health and wellness, Dr. Cheryl Pegus, said basically everything: “When vaccines roll out in the US, Walmart is ready to serve.”
“Over the past year,” the company says, they have trained “thousands of pharmacists and drugstores” in “more than 5,000 pharmacies in the U.S. and Puerto Rico” to begin administration. Once the vaccines start arriving “at full capacity”, Walmart says “we expect to be able to deliver 10-13 million doses a month, and” run vaccinations seven days a week at our pharmacies “- and in particular in” federally designated medically underserved areas. ”
Amazon may be the king of package and parcel delivery, but ‘with 150 million people walking through our doors every week,’ Walmart reminds the government that it’s in a unique position to reach people where they are already shopping do.’
Investors seem to be betting that the government will offer Walmart. On a lower day for the stock market, Walmart shares are up more than 1%.