The Department of Veterans Affairs does not have on-demand
coronavirus testing for its employees up and running just yet, despite its best
intentions to screen anyone who presented symptoms or believed they had been
exposed.
VA has tested about 12% of its health workforce for the
virus, Richard Stone, executive-in-charge at the Veterans Health
Administration, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Wednesday afternoon.
His comments contrast with those the department made one
week ago before another congressional committee, when Jennifer MacDonald, chief
consultant to the deputy VA undersecretary for health, told a House
appropriations subcommittee any symptomatic employee or anyone who wanted a
test could be screened.
“We’re not hearing that,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the
committee’s ranking member, said. “We’re not hearing that from the folks on the
ground. We’re still hearing that they’re not being tested.”
“Senator, you are exactly right, we’re not there yet,” Stone
said. “Although we’ve tested over 12% of our employees, and it is our intent to
have on-demand testing for all of our employees, we’re not there yet.”
VA’s labs have the capacity to process 60,000 coronavirus
tests a week, Stone said, but the department lacked the swabs and cartridges
necessary to fully screen employees.
“Simply when we issued the guidance to go to on-demand
testing for our employees, we ran out of swabs because of some problems with
UPS shipping,” he said. “That was a national problem with the crashing of UPS
systems for a weekend. We have now recovered from that. Right now, we have
about 60,000 tests available, but we do not have the ability to institute
on-demand testing for our employees. It is our intent to get there.”
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