Amazon.com Inc. is ready to assist with the national effort to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, Dave Clark, head of the company’s worldwide consumer business, wrote in a letter addressed to U.S. President Joe Biden.

“As you begin your work leading the country out of the Covid-19 crisis, Amazon stands ready to assist you in reaching your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration,” Clark wrote in the letter, published by CNBC today. 

Amazon operates an extensive logistics network that includes numerous fulfillment centers, thousands of trucks and its own fleet of cargo planes. The company’s Amazon Web Services Inc. unit, in turn, is the largest provider of cloud computing services. 

“We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts,” Clark wrote. “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.”

The executive also shared details about the company’s work to protect the frontline workers at its fulfillment centers and broader logistics network. Amazon, Clark wrote, has signed an agreement with a licensed third-party occupational health care provider to administer vaccines at its facilities. 

“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. We will assist them in that effort,” Clark said. Amazon hired hundreds of thousands of new workers over the past year to meet surging e-commerce demand, a recruiting push that the company disclosed recently had increased its global headcount to about 1 million employees. 

Amazon said in a December update that it was expecting its total 2020 spending on “COVID-related initiatives to keep employees safe and get products to customers” to reach $10 billion. As part of the effort, the company set up multiple testing labs and implemented new operational policies at its warehouses including enhanced social distancing measures. 

Photo: Amazon