Supermarket giant The Kroger Co. announced Wednesday it will offer the COVID-19 vaccine at its 2,200 pharmacies and 200 health clinics across the U.S., including all 103 Kroger Michigan pharmacy locations.
The Cincinnati-based national grocery chain will also hire up to 1,000 workers for the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. A representative from Kroger did not immediately respond to how many of those jobs will be in Michigan.
The timeline for when Kroger will have access to the vaccine and begin distributing to the public was not disclosed, but the company said it will be prepared to distribute when the government approves wide distribution.
"Kroger Health is a COVID-19 response leader that has provided our patients, associates and other businesses with diagnostic testing tools and supporting resources since the onset of this public health crisis," Colleen Lindholz, Kroger Health's president, said in a news release. "The size and scale of our health care operation provides us with the unique ability to efficiently facilitate COVID-19 testing and immunize a large portion of the U.S. population, once the authorized vaccines become more widely available."
Kroger will begin to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Alaska this week to health care workers, it said in the release.
Nationally, the company said it has administered more than 250,000 COVID-19 tests since April and launched rapid antibody testing in October.
This story first appeared in Crain's Detroit Business.
