Amazon lottery to promote vaccination among workers with cars, vacation packages

Amazon.com – summoning its inner Oprah – will offer cash prizes of as much as $500,000 as well as cars and vacation packages to frontline employees who can prove they have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Unwilling so far to mandate vaccinations for its 1.3-million-strong workforce, the world’s largest online retailer is hoping a corporate lottery – called Max Your Vax – will persuade holdouts to get the jab. The announcement, a copy of which was seen Friday by Bloomberg, came the same day that Amazon said that starting Aug. 9 workers would have to wear masks in its logistics facilities, regardless of vaccination status – a reflection of the severity of the spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. Vaccinated workers had been able to work at Amazon mask-free since late May.