VA hospital administers first vaccines to vets
WEST HAVEN — The Veterans Affairs medical center on Campbell Avenue began administering doses of the coronavirus vaccine to veterans Tuesday, with plans to give the shots to thousands within a month.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Alfred Montoya, director of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, and hospital officials spoke with the media after two veterans over the age of 90 received the vaccine.
“America should know — our veterans believe in this vaccine, and our VA staff is stepping up and rolling up its sleeves,” said Blumenthal.
“We should be very proud of these veterans who are over 90 years old,” Blumenthal said. “They’re part of the greatest generation; they’re among the first to step forward — and they’re role models for all of us. ... They’re showing that this vaccine is safe and effective.”
Montoya said the hospital was beginning by vaccinating veterans over the age of 90 with “several comorbidities,” transplant patients, and all people undergoing dialysis. Approximately 23 people were scheduled to get a dose Tuesday, he said.
Comorbidities are other diseases or conditions present in a patient, often longterm or chronic ailments, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The hospital is selecting those veterans served by the hospital deemed to be the most vulnerable and contacting them to set up an appointment, Montoya said. Calling to ask for the vaccine, he said, does not speed access to it.
Dr. Chris Ruser, chief of primary care at the hospital, said their goal was to
“We should be very proud of these veterans who are over 90 years old. They’re part of the greatest generation; they’re among the first to step forward — and they’re role models for all of us. ... They’re showing that this vaccine is safe and effective.”
administer the first round of shots to the roughly 2,000 to 2,500 people in the initial category within a month.
The hospital has a sufficient supply of the vaccine to get that done, he said. But staffing limitations and social distancing requirements, as well as a mandatory questionnaire and 15-minute waiting period for those vaccinated, to check for adverse reactions, will limit the speed of the process.
“There’s that throughput part,” said Ruser. “So even if you’re doing two shifts a day or three shifts a day — plus weekends — there’s some limitations to the numbers of vaccines we can give in the setting that we have. I think that will be one of the factors that we will have to deal with, more than supply at this point.”
As the process moves forward, the vaccine largely will be administered based on age, but other risk factors also will dictate who is chosen, Ruser said.
“Age is probably the easiest and most important predictor of risk for severe COVID,” said Ruser.
However, Ruser said, veterans undergoing chemotherapy could also be considered vulnerable enough to receive the vaccine, even if they’re youn
ger than the age bracket that’s the main focus of the rollout.
Blumenthal said about 75 percent of the VA staff had been vaccinated so far.
Blumenthal said he had gotten the vaccine after the National Security Council suggested that Congress be inoculated as a national security measure, and his doctor had recommended it. He hasn’t had any adverse effects.
Blumenthal said the VA staffers were “working as hard as they can, with every resource at their disposal,” to provide the vaccine to veterans.
He said that the medication has not been rolled out quickly enough to the American public, including
veterans, and called for the process to be expedited through the Defense Production Act.
The president, he said, could “in effect, commandeer the resources of United States manufacturers” to to create a “Marshall Plan for the vaccine in America.”
He also suggested that National Guard members could be put to work administering vaccines to people.
“The rollout has to be expanded,” said Blumenthal. “We need these vaccines to go in the arms of our veterans, and into the arms of all Americans.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal