Uber on Thursday asked the U.S. Centers for Ailment Manage and Avoidance to designate its trip-hail and shipping and delivery drivers as non-wellness crucial workers entitled to early COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

The business, in a letter to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Procedures, stated its drivers supplied vital transportation for crucial workers and authorized many others to continue to be residence and order food items.

“Early obtain to a vaccine would support drivers and shipping and delivery persons continue to participate in their crucial purpose while also reducing the hazard that they may possibly inadvertently contract, or probably transmit, the virus,” stated the letter, signed by Uber’s head of federal affairs, Danielle Burr.

The letter will come as many sector groups, which includes in the food items creation, agricultural, purchaser goods and trucking sector are asking officers to prioritize their workers for early vaccine distribution.

U.S. govt officers have stated that up to twenty million persons could be vaccinated by the end of 2020, but that it would choose until the middle of 2021 for most Us citizens to acquire obtain to productive inoculation.

The CDC Advisory Committee is drafting recommendations for who ought to be prioritized for distribution, and on Tuesday stated healthcare staff and citizens of prolonged-time period treatment facilities ought to get the vaccine initial.

A U.S. govt company in August integrated trip-hail, taxi, shipping and delivery and car or truck rental solutions in a checklist of crucial vital infrastructure workers that also integrated much more than three hundred other position categories.