By now, most people are familiar with the term "twindemic." If not, Jeffrey Lackey, vice president of talent acquisition for CVS Health, can easily spell it out.
"It's the flu season at the same time that we have COVID-19," Lackey said.
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Lackey told ABC7 News in San Francisco that the primary job at CVS Health is to look around the corner to what's next. In this case, that means filling jobs.
"The need for that to be dispersed quickly is going to be absolutely critical," Lackey said. "We knew, first and foremost, we need to handle the here and now and let's ramp up to get in front of the flu."
More than 10,000 of the new roles are for full and part-time licensed pharmacy technicians.
"Pharmacy techs remarkably are a critical component," Lackey continued. "I've noticed that in any place that has an abundance of pharm-techs, you have an amazing experience as a patient."
People in these roles are also vital to administering COVID-19 tests at the more than 4,000 drive-thru CVS testing sites across the country.
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Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer are all in phase 3 trials for a potential vaccine. Pfizer expects to apply for an emergency use authorization with the Food and Drug Administration next month.
We still don't know when a vaccine would be available to the public, but CVS Health isn't waiting around to find out.
"We're talking millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people in short order and that's-even to an organization as big as CVS, you know that's still going to be a daunting task and we need to make sure we're ready for it," Lackey said.
CVS Health is also actively recruiting nurses, nurse practitioners, work-from-home customer service representatives, pharmacists, and other positions. For more information, click here.
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