New York Veterans Hospital, Struggling With Coronavirus Outbreak, Asked to Help Civilians

The Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to provide enough staffing and equipment for former vets hospitalized with the coronavirus illness in New York City, nursing union representatives say, yet some lawmakers are pressing the agency to treat civilians as well.

New York state has become the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic with more than 37,000 cases and 385 deaths, sending local and state leaders scrambling to increase hospital capacity.

The VA has a legal mandate to provide civilian care in an emergency. But the agency is facing the same surge in COVID-19 patients as other hospitals throughout New York, raising serious questions about whether it can expand it services, said Corey Lanham, VA Division Director for National Nurses United (NNU).

“I don’t know where the staff to cover all these patients is going to come from, and I don’t think they know either,” Lanham said.

The Trump administration has pledged to send a 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship to the city, and construct 🪖Military field hospitals. But the ship and makeshift hospitals will not be ready for some time and the infection rate in New York is accelerating fast. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said the state needs tens of thousands more ventilators than it currently has, among other shortages.

All U.S. veterans in the city’s five boroughs who need inpatient hospital treatment are being routed to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Brooklyn.

NNU represents 270 registered nurses at the Brooklyn facility. At least three have tested positive for the virus and are quarantined, the union said. One licensed practical nurse, who assist RNs, has also been infected with the highly contagious respiratory illness.

Two doctors there also tested positive and were quarantined, the VA told the Military