Washington state taps Starbucks for help with Covid vaccine rollout

Washington taps Starbucks for help with Covid vaccine rollout The coffee giant has committed a team to work full time on expediting its home state's vaccine distribution. NBC News

Aiming to boost the slow pace of administering Covid-19 vaccinations, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday that the state has turned to Starbucks for help streamlining logistics and setting a new goal to dole out 45,000 doses a day.

Starbucks has assigned 11 employees with expertise in labor and deployment, operations, and research and development to work full time on vaccine distribution in its home state, the company said, adding that the number of employees could change.

Inslee said the state is also arranging for over 2,000 pharmacies to administer vaccinations and setting up drive-by vaccination sites. Microsoft, another Seattle area-based corporation, will also set up a site to perform 5,000 vaccinations a day, he said. ...

Inslee, a Democrat, said that the state underestimated how difficult it would be to vaccinate all health care workers quickly before moving on to other populations and that fewer people signed up for vaccinations than it expected.

"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," he said. "And in order to identify them and vector them into the sites — that has been a slower part of the process. 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." ...