Veterans put in focus with high death toll

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a disproportionately high fatality rate in some war veterans homes compared with other nursing homes, leading the US Department of Veterans Affairs to move to ensure more lives aren't lost to the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

The department runs more than 100 nursing homes, or community living centers, or CLCs, in every state. The centers are solely funded by the department. They cater to 33,000 US veterans, who mostly served during World War II.

But with more than 30,000 beds and about 133 homes, it is the state veterans home program that is the largest provider of long-term care to veterans, the department said.

Most of those homes are owned, operated and managed by individual states. Approximately 20 to 23 percent of them are overseen by external management companies. These are privately run and are for-profit ventures.

In Texas, all nine state veterans homes are overseen by external management companies. Those homes had more than double the death rate among COVID-19-infected residents from the pandemic's start until June compared with other nursing homes in the state, according to a monthslong investigation by the Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle published last month.

Nearly 570 residents of veterans homes tested positive for the coronavirus in Texas, and 134 died.

As of Sunday, the department reported 276,674 cumulative virus cases, including veterans and employees, and 12,761 COVID-19 deaths.

The official COVID-19 death toll in all US nursing homes exceeds 133,000, accounting for more than 1 in 5 of the nation's pandemic deaths, Michelle Cottle, a member of The New York Times Editorial Board, wrote in an article on Sunday.

The department reported nearly 3,900 infections among veterans and staff on July 26, up from about 1,500 in mid-June, a USA Today review found. Hospitalizations in the week before the report rose to 345, up from 225 at the end of May.

The pandemic didn't just affect residents. Since the beginning of the outbreak in March 2020, 146 of the department's healthcare workers have died. In recent weeks, four unvaccinated employees died from COVID-19. At least three died from the Delta variant.

On July 26, the department said it would require 115,000 of its frontline healthcare workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in the next two months. It is the first federal agency with such a mandate. At least 69 percent "have completed vaccination in VHA (Veterans Health Administration)", the department said.

Integrated system

The VHA is the country's largest integrated healthcare system, providing care at 1,293 facilities, including 171 medical centers and 1,112 outpatient sites, serving 9 million enrolled veterans each year, the agency said on its website.

With the Delta variant surging in many states, a department spokesman told China Daily that the agency has maintained "strict safety protocols" to protect veterans at its facilities.

The department said that it had learned several lessons during the initial wave of the pandemic, including "how to efficiently and accurately disseminate quickly evolving communication and guidance to CLCs nationwide. And "also (paying) attention and vigilance to infection prevention is key".

In the past year, of 1,896 residents who were exposed to the coronavirus during the course of their stay, 154 had an "associated death", a department official told China Daily.

Heng Weili in New York contributed to this story.