VA Puget Sound will be among first to get newly approved COVID-19 vaccine
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced VA Puget Sound is one of 37 VA medical centers that will receive its initial distribution of a newly approved COVID-19 vaccine.
The VA Puget Sound Health Care System runs two campuses in Washington, one at American Lake in Lakewood, the other on Beacon Hill, in Seattle, as well as seven clinics across the region.
The vaccine will first be provided to front-line VA health care workers and veterans residing in long-term care units in the 37 medical centers chosen, according to a statement released by the VA on Thursday.
The VA is among a handful of federal agencies that will receive direction allocation of the vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control, according to the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook published by the CDC in Oct. 2020.
On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine became the first COVID-19 vaccine to be recommended for emergency use in the United States. A vaccine by Moderna is expected to receive a green light when the FDA reviews it on Dec. 17.
The VA has ordered 73,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 122,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, according to Richard Stone, the VA’s acting undersecretary for health.
During a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on the VA’s COVID-19 response, Stone said the VA is expecting their first doses to arrive within a week, but added that they will not have an adequate amount of the vaccine. Stone said he expects it will be a “long process” to reach the agency’s 400,000 employees and 7 million beneficiaries.
The 37 medical centers, including VA Puget Sound, were chosen out of the VA’s more than 170 medical centers because they can store the vaccine at extremely cold temperatures and because of their ability to vaccinate large numbers of people.
VA Puget Sound serves more than 155,000 veterans in Washington and is home to the VA’s 5th largest research program.
This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 5:10 AM.
