VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System
Pittsburgh’s Veterans Affairs health care system had offered walk-in registrations and clinics aimed at vaccinating its oldest veterans before the state ordered vaccine providers to better serve older Pennsylvanians.
It administered roughly 2,000 first doses at its clinic Feb. 6. A VA spokesperson said the system will focus on administering second doses to those veterans before booking appointments for those awaiting their first shot.
Veterans Affairs offices had already been taking calls for vaccine appointments. Pittsburgh’s VA has been vaccinating its oldest veterans since the beginning of January, according to director Donald Koenig.
The VA health care system gets its own allocation from the federal government, separate from that which is sent to the state. Doses are distributed to facilities by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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Baby boomers remember both the fear of poliomyelitis the viral infection that attacks the nervous system, leaving some who contract it paralyzed, or dead and the relief that they felt when the rollout of Jonas Salk’s vaccine put an end to repeated midcentury summer outbreaks of the disease. In 1954, the summer before this rollout, 1.8 million kids participated in a widely publicized trial of the new vaccine. From the vantage point of 2020, when vaccine skepticism floats right below the surface of public debate, the widespread embrace of the new vaccine feels surprising. Was the March of Dimes–financed rollout of Salk’s miracle jab, conducted in a hurry as polio threatened to strike again in the summer of 1955, really as smooth as history makes it seem?
oversaw the most egregious examples of mismanagement that in a case of a legionnaire s outbreak at a va pittsburgh facility led to at least five veteran deaths. according to the house veterans affairs committee, diana rubens with, the va executive in charge of the nearly 60 offices that process disability benefits compensation claims, they collected $60,000 in bonuses while presiding over a near-sevenfold increase in back hog claims. in philadelphia, the director of the regional office received a $23,000 bonus in twfn despite doubling the backlog from 2010-2011. after a deadly legionnaire s outbreak in pittsburgh, va regional director michael moreland collected a $63,000 bonus, that s just one example of over clash 573,000 in bonus checks paid out to va officials who oversaw record highs in