Trump's VA secretary confirms first veteran coronavirus case

United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Robert Wilkie on Wednesday (local time) confirmed that one veteran is being treated for coronavirus at a VA facility in Palo Alto, California.

Adding that the agency has a section of the campus set up to receive veterans who have the virus, Wilkie said: "We began moving on supply chain and preparation really before this became a national issue. Case in point is the one veteran, that we know of, who has this virus. We prepared a swath, a section of our Palo Alto campus to receive veterans who have this virus. We set it up for that and that veteran is being taken care of there," CNN reported.

This is the first time coronavirus has directly touched the second-largest federal agency, which provides care to veterans at 1,243 health care facilities across the United States.

Wilkie, who is part of the White House task force addressing the virus, after the hearing, asserted that while there is only one known coronavirus case involving a veteran, VA staff and facilities are well prepared to handle the outbreak should it continue to spread.

"We rehearse all the time, for epidemics and natural disasters -- we are constantly rehearsing and just change the name on whatever we are dealing with ... if it's Ebola, if it's H1-N1, that's how we deal with it," he said.

Meanwhile, Veterans Health Administration (VHA) head Dr Richard Stone said that VA has about 1,000 testing kits, and each kit is capable of testing hundreds of people.

Globally, deaths due to Covid-19 have crossed 3,000. The deadly virus, that originated in China late last year, continues to spread around the world.