VA’s protective equipment supplies inadequate for second wave of coronavirus, officials warn – By Leo Shane III (Federal Times) / June 10 2020
Veterans Affairs’ top health official said the current 30-day supply of personal protective equipment is about half what he wants it to be and about five months less than what will be needed if the coronavirus pandemic has a second wave in the fall.
“A surge (this fall) is a complete unknown,” said Dr. Richard Stone, executive in charge of the Veterans Health Administration, during a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday on the department’s supply chain challenges.
“All we have to go by is what happened in the fall of 1918 with the influenza pandemic where the second wave had a dramatically greater mortality than the first wave.”
Despite those problems, however, Stone said he believes the department’s response to the pandemic this spring was laudable, and insisted that increased worldwide demand on medical masks, gowns and gloves has not put any employees in danger.
“No facility at VA ever ran out of protective equipment, and we are taking steps to ensure that we never risk exhaustion of our supplies and future disasters,” he said. “We are working diligently to not only prepare for a potential second wave of COVID-19, but also for any other disaster the nation might face.”
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