Executives from an industrial conglomerate, a health system and a professional sports ownership group met up this month in their Charlotte, N.C., neighborhood to walk and vent. The national rollout of Covid-19 vaccine doses, they agreed, wasn’t going fast enough.
By the end of the stroll, they had sketched the outline of a plan to speed things up: Combine the logistics technology of Honeywell International Inc., the expertise of health system Atrium Health, and the real estate of Tepper Sports & Entertainment to inoculate thousands more people a day than the average North Carolina vaccination site currently does.
“It’s the last mile,” Honeywell Chief Executive Darius Adamczyk said of the problems that have plagued the vaccine rollout. Mr. Adamczyk is part of the North Carolina trio, along with Atrium CEO Eugene Woods and Tepper President Tom Glick. “We dramatically need to pick up the pace.”
The North Carolina executives aren’t the only business leaders stepping in to offer private-sector expertise to help more Americans get Covid-19 shots.
Washington state this week said that private companies will lend expertise to accelerate its vaccine rollout, among them Starbucks Corp. , which will provide help with vaccine-administration facility layout and has started working on ways to reduce patient wait times.
