TechNet members have powered America during the pandemic by producing personal protective equipment and ventilators, helping scientists to discover new drug treatments and research vaccines, reducing barriers to telework and telemedicine, connecting students and teachers, empowering small businesses with e-commerce solutions, delivering food and essentials, providing emergency transportation, and facilitating contact tracing and COVID vaccine distribution, all while upholding IT infrastructures.
Here are just a few of the many examples of how tech is helping vaccinate Americans remain healthy during the pandemic and drive our economic recovery:
Powering the Vaccine Rollout:
- Amazon vaccinated front-line employees on-site at several locations throughout the country and offered $80 to front-line workers who get vaccinated off-site.
- Amyris made the vaccine more widely accessible and removed barriers in the current vaccine manufacturing process. The company partnered with the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) to advance a novel RNA vaccine platform, including the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
- AT&T, Accenture, and Shipt are among the many companies that provided paid time off for employees to get vaccinated.
- Honeywell partnered with organizations in Charlotte, N.C. to distribute one million vaccines by July 4, 2021.
- The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is using Oracle’s National Electronic Health Records Cloud plus Oracle’s Public Health Management Applications Suite to manage the COVID-19 vaccination program throughout the United States.
- Salesforce is helping more than 150 organizations globally with vaccine management and COVID-19 tracking.
- Uber is donating 10 million free rides to and from vaccination sites as well as providing users the ability to easily find the nearest vaccination site through their app.
Supporting Our Medical Professionals and Enabling Telemedicine:
- Teladoc Health launched Mental Health Care, a telemedicine service to provide virtual mental health care, a need accelerated by the pandemic.
- Apple sourced over 20 million masks and produced one million face shields per week for medical workers.
- GM made more than 1.5 million face masks a month for frontline workers and built more than 30,000 ventilators for the national stockpile.
- SmileDirectClub made it easier for licensed dentists and orthodontists to communicate with patients through video on their app while offices were closed.
- HPE accelerated vaccine research for COVID-19 with high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.
- Cisco helped doctors transition to virtual visits by donating teleconference equipment to hospitals so routine healthcare could continue.
- Bloom Energy refurbished ventilators for the state of California.
Helping Businesses and Employees Stay Productive:
- Google launched a free digital skills training platform to help job seekers and entrepreneurs impacted by the pandemic
- Comcast increased internet speeds and stability, offered free internet service for low-income households, and committed over $500 million to support employees where operations were closed or impacted.
- Zoom allowed thousands of businesses and millions of workers to transition to telework as well as safely re-enter the office.
- PayPal facilitated $2 billion in loans through the Paycheck Protection Program to support 76,000 small businesses and 308,000 jobs.
- CLEAR introduced Health Pass, a free mobile app that shows a digital vaccine card to help confirm requirements for entry set by businesses and venues.
Aiding Small Businesses:
- eBay created their Up & Running initiative to help small businesses start and grow their businesses online. Through the program, eBay provides fee discounts and special guidance.
- Comcast launched Comcast RISE to create a sustainable impact and give meaningful support to the small businesses that are shaping communities throughout the United States.
- DoorDash made a five-year, $200 million Main Street Strong Pledge to support local communities, businesses, and local economies. DoorDash has also distributed $10 million in grants to help more than 2,000 restaurants in the U.S. and Canada recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Facebook expanded the Facebook Invoice Fast Track program to help small businesses get cash immediately for the goods and services for which they’ve invoiced their customers.
- Verizon donated $10 million to support small businesses through the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), focused on business owners in historically underserved communities.
- Visa committed to elevating 50 million small and micro businesses (SMBs) worldwide to help local communities and businesses.
Helping Students and Teachers:
- Coursera announced the Coursera Workforce Recovery Initiative to help governments worldwide provide unemployed workers with free access to 3,800 online courses.
- Comcast provided free internet access to students and families in low-income communities.
- DoorDash delivered meals to vulnerable students.
- AT&T committed $10 million to help provide internet connectivity to at-risk students
- Amazon expanded its Right Now Needs Fund to support thousands of students from underserved communities and donated more than $10 million to programs and initiatives that support the immediate needs of students.
- Google added more than 50 new features to tools serving schools so students could continue to learn from anywhere.
Powering U.S. Job Growth, Investment, and American Competitiveness:
- Amazon is on track to buy $120 billion worth of supplies and services from businesses in the United States in 2021. The purchases are from more than 200,000 companies across the country and will both boost local economies and support an additional 840,000 American jobs.
- Apple committed $430 billion to support American innovation and drive economic recovery in every state. They also pledged to add 20,000 new jobs across the United States in the next five years.
- Google is investing over $7 billion in offices and data centers across the United States, and creating at least 10,000 new full-time jobs in multiple states this year.
- Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners are driving economic growth that will create 9.3 million new jobs and $1.6 trillion in new business revenues by 2026.
Supporting Communities and Those in Need:
- Amazon, Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber provided free grocery delivery to millions.
- eBay raised nearly $123 million globally in charitable donations to help organizations in need.
- Intuit launched COVID-19 Tax Center to help Americans see if they qualified for a stimulus check and help them receive payment sooner.
- DoorDash donated $1 million to community-based organizations in California to support vaccine outreach and participation in underserved communities.
- Gopuff donated $1 million to front-line health care workers, including direct funds for local vaccination programs in Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, Houston, Phoenix, Chicago, and Atlanta.
- Toyota has awarded more than $8 million in grants to several nonprofits across the country and manufactured and donated 500,000 protective face shields for healthcare professionals.