Amazon Offers to Help Biden Administration With CCP Virus Vaccine Distribution

The logo of Amazon is pictured inside the company's office in Bengaluru, India, on April 20, 2018. Abhishek N. Chinnappa/File Photo/Reuters

E-commerce giant Amazon has offered to help the Biden administration with accelerating the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, while seeking to get its employees inoculated as early as possible.

Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark said in a letter to President Joe Biden on the day of his inauguration (pdf) that the company is willing to leverage its operations to help vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of the his administration.

“Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort,” Clark wrote.

The Epoch Times reached out to Amazon asking whether they approached the Trump administration with a similar offer of support, but did not receive a response by publication.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who holds around a 10-percent stake in the company, also owns The Washington Post, which endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket.

Clark also called for the earliest possible inoculation of Amazon employees, many of whom are essential workers.

“The essential employees working at Amazon fulfillment centers, AWS data centers, and Whole Foods Market stores across the country who cannot work from home should receive the COVID-19 vaccine at the earliest appropriate time,” Clark wrote, noting also that Amazon has an agreement with a licensed third-party occupational health care provider to offer vaccines to employees on site.

In working to get their employees priority access to the vaccine, Amazon, like Uber and Aldi, lobbied to move their workers closer to the front of the line for vaccinations.

Conflicting state and local guidelines on how shots will be administered and to which workers have made the process of navigating the vaccine rollout confusing for corporations and industry bodies.

Meanwhile, health officials have lamented the slower-than-expected rollout of the vaccine, and have urged more federal aid to state and local authorities to smooth distribution and administration. They have also made reassuring remarks about vaccine safety in a bid to overcome vaccine hesitancy and get more shots into the arms of Americans faster.

Biden was set to sign 10 pandemic-related executive orders on Thursday, his second day in office, after signing an executive order on Wednesday that requires mask-wearing on federal property.

One of the orders Biden is expected to sign on Thursday would mandate masks in airports and on flights, trains, and buses for months, according to USA TODAY.

Biden is also depending on Congress to provide $1.9 trillion for economic relief and to ramp up the COVID-19 response, with many states complaining the lack resources to boost vaccine administration.

So far, more than 400,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, according to a Johns Hopkins tally.