In an effort to boost the administration of coronavirus vaccines, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday that the state has teamed up with Starbucks to streamline logistics and set a new goal to distribute 45,000 doses a day.
Starbucks has assigned more than 10 employees with expertise in labor and deployment, operations, and research and development so they can work full time on vaccine distribution, the company said.
Inslee said the state has also been arranging for more than 2,000 pharmacies to administer vaccines and set up drive-by vaccination sites. He said, “Microsoft, another Seattle area-based corporation, will also set up a site to perform 5,000 vaccinations a day,” according to NBC News.
“This is a unique challenge for the United States and in every state to stand up a total mobilization of our resources,” Inslee added. “We did that in World War II when we built the Liberty ships here in Washington State. We reached production levels that no one could imagine because we set ambitious goals.”
Nationwide, more than 12 million people have received one dose of either Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said, “We can’t think that’s an acceptable pace. So we have to dramatically scale this up and accelerate the progress.”
Inslee said, “We’re having the same challenges that every state has had because we started on the more difficult part of this — which is a fairly select small group, which is health care workers.”
“And in order to identify them and vector them into the sites — that has been a slower part of the process,” he added. “Now we will start today to open up this to people of age over 65. It is much easier to communicate and coordinate that group to get them in.”
Last week, President-elect Joe Biden said that he would deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard to set up vaccination centers across the nation, aiming to administer 100 million doses in the first 100 days of his term.
States have started working with pharmacy chains to expand the distribution of vaccines to medical workers. So far, West Virginia has vaccinated more residents than any other state by working with small pharmacies instead of large chains.
Inslee went on to say that he has plenty of trust in the Biden administration and that it will do a better job rolling out vaccines to the states. He said, “I’m confident we’re going to have a much better relationship, that the federal government is not going to consciously deceive us like the last administration did. And so I feel very good about our federal partnership moving forward.”
