As new coronavirus hot spots have emerged across the country,
the Department of Veterans Affairs has so far deployed nearly 1,000 of its own
medical professionals to 46 states as part of its “fourth mission.”
The department is currently tracking some 5,254 active
coronavirus cases, including 4,655 veterans and 432 VA employees, according to
public data.
To date 40 employees have died due to complications from
coronavirus. Since the beginning of the pandemic, VA has tracked 26,132
cumulative cases, including a total of 2,624 employee cases.
“We have not been hit particularly hard in the broader
sense, in that we have about 600 beds occupied by veterans who have Covid,” VA
Secretary Robert Wilkie told reporters Tuesday. “We’ve lost about 1,500, but
the vast majority of veterans who contracted this have recovered. That has
allowed us to increase our footprint across the country.”
The department is currently taking care of 9,000
non-veterans patients with the virus, he said.
VA employees, for example, are assisting some 30 nursing
homes in Florida today with the state’s coronavirus response, Wilkie said. The
department sent medical professionals on Sunday to help a state-run mental
health hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.
“It’s balancing for us; our veterans come first,” Wilkie
said. “[In] the New York metropolitan area, we did not have a great explosion
in terms of veterans cases, at least veterans cases that required
hospitalization, and that’s when we opened our doors. We look at conditions on
the ground as to where to deploy.”
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