Apple to Help Employees Get COVID-19 Vaccine Shots at Its Offices

Apple said on Friday that it is starting a program to help employees get voluntary COVID-19 vaccinations at the iPhone maker's offices.

The company is working with drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance as its vendor and will open a website for its workers to sign up for appointments, an Apple spokeswoman said.

Apple is one of the first large Silicon Valley companies to launch a program to help workers get vaccinated.

Deutsche Bank AG earlier this month became the first big bank in New York to say it would offer employees COVID-19 vaccinations at its offices.

Amazon.com has also begun onsite vaccinations for its front-line employees, starting in Missouri, Nevada, and Kansas. Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant for its Echo devices, recently got the ability to search for nearby vaccination sites and help connect users with these websites to check for availability or schedule an appointment. Alexa users can give the voice command, “Alexa, where can I get a COVID vaccine?” and a list of all the nearby vaccination sites will be listed out. This will be particularly useful for the elderly, who may find it difficult to schedule an appointment via online portals and sites.

Earlier this month, Facebook said that it is converting a part of its Menlo Park headquarters into a vaccination site, joining the government effort to speed up the vaccination drive in the US. The company said that it was teaming up with Ravenswood Family Health Centre for the initiative.

"We're also teaming up with the State of California and local nonprofits to support mobile vaccination clinics in four of the state's hardest hit regions," Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a post.

Facebook has also launched a tool to give people in the US information about where to get COVID-19 vaccines and added a COVID-19 information area to its photo-sharing site, Instagram.

© Thomson Reuters 2021