Date
June 21, 2021
Related Links
Fact Sheet: The Mental Health Impact of COVID-19 on New York State Veterans When One Shot Is Not Enough: Ensuring New Yorkers Complete the COVID-19 Vaccine Series Mental Health Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic in New York StateOn June 21, 2021, NYHealth hosted a webinar discussion on the vaccine rollout in the veterans community.
More than 2.7 million veterans across the country have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—including more than 113,000 in New York State alone. And the picture is looking brighter: for the first time in 14 months, VA had its first 24 hours without a COVID-related patient death in May. But the vaccination rate represents only a small percentage of the 19 million veterans in the United States, more than half of whom are not eligible for VA health care or choose not to use it.
Dr. Kavita Patel, a VA-trained primary care physician and Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, discussed current vaccine rollout efforts across the states, the role that VA and private providers can play in boosting vaccine uptake, and ways that we can combat vaccine hesitancy in both military and civilian communities.