More than 6,100 Department of Veterans Affairs patients have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the outbreak, up 650 -- or 10% of all deaths -- in the past 10 days alone, according to data released Tuesday by the department.
The rising death toll means the VA will see its deadliest month for coronavirus cases to date in December. The department has recorded 1,170 deaths from COVID-19 since Dec. 1, exceeding the record of more than 1,000 last month, with more than a week to go until the end of the year.
As of Tuesday, the VA had registered a total of 142,511 coronavirus cases since the beginning of the outbreak and 6,192 deaths, both up about 10% since Dec. 11, when it last published case numbers.
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During the same time frame, active cases of the virus among VA patients, including employees, dropped by 15 percent, from 17,757 to 15,086, according to the department.
The VA website where officials usually publish coronavirus data was down for maintenance from Dec. 11 to Dec. 22, making it difficult to determine whether cases spiked on a certain date or when hospitalizations began to decline.
The death toll among VA employees also rose sharply during the same period, from 79 to 90. VA officials last week began vaccinating health care workers and high-risk patients for the coronavirus, aiming to stem the spread of the sometimes-fatal disease within the system.
On Monday, the VA announced 128 additional sites that will begin administering vaccines, including shots developed and manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna.
"Having a second COVID-19 vaccine will enable us to reach more facilities and vaccinate more health care personnel and veterans in additional parts of the country," VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said in a release.
Coronavirus cases, as well as hospitalizations and deaths, are surging across the U.S. this month. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 18 million people have tested positive and more than 319,466 have died, including more than 50,000 since Dec. 1. That death toll is 82% higher than the record in April, when 60,738 Americans died.
The U.S. is averaging more than 211,000 new cases a day.
As of last week, 1,318 patients were being treated at a VA facility for complications of COVID-19; all other active cases were convalescing at home or at a non-medical facility.
Representatives for the American Federation of Government Employees -- the largest union representing VA employees -- expressed frustration last week with VA leadership, whom they said were shutting them out of COVID-19 response planning and the vaccine rollout.
Union officials said employees at some facilities still don't have enough personal protective equipment and are not kept in the loop on the available stockpiles. They also said that nursing and other frontline staff continue to be short-handed and are exhausted.
"A lot of my nurses are fatigued beyond belief," Geddes Scott, president of the AFGE local at St. Albans Community Living Center, Queens, New York, said during a press call Dec. 16.
As of Dec. 14, the VA had tested nearly 1.1 million veterans and employees for COVID-19.
-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.
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