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Amazon offers President Biden help with vaccine distribution

Company sent letter to President Biden Wednesday

FILE - The Amazon logo appears in Douai, northern France on April 16, 2020. The online retailer was ideally positioned to provide books, not just for convenience but for safety, during the pandemic. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File) (Michel Spingler, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Amazon wasted no time reaching out to the new Biden administration to get the coronavirus vaccine for its essential workers.

In a letter to President Biden Wednesday, Amazon says it stands ready to assist in getting 100-million Americans vaccinated in the first 100 days.

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But the online retail giant also wants its 800,000 U.S. employees moved up on the priority list to get the vaccine.

In October, Amazon said more than 19,000 of its front-line U.S. employees have tested positive or been presumed positive for coronavirus.

Amazon said that it has already arranged a licensed third-party occupational health care provider to give vaccines  on-site at its facilities for its employees when they become available.

In the letter to the new president, Amazon says it is prepared to help the administration address the pandemic. But the exact details are unclear, and there’s been no response yet from the new president’s COVID team.

“We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts,” wrote the CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer division, Dave Clark, in a letter  to Biden. “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.”

Biden will sign 10 pandemic-related executive orders on Thursday, his second day in office, but the administration says efforts to supercharge the rollout of vaccines have been hampered by lack of cooperation from the Trump administration during the transition.

They say they don’t have a complete understanding of the previous administration’s actions on vaccine distribution.   Biden is also depending on Congress to provide  $1.9 trillion for economic relief and COVID-19 response.

There are a litany of complaints from states that say they are not getting enough vaccine even as they are being asked to vaccinate a broader swath of Americans.   

According to data through January 20 from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily new deaths in the U.S. rose over the past two weeks from 2,677.3 on January 6 to 3,054.1 on Wednesday. More than 400,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19.

The Associated Press contributed to this report


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