
On December 11, 2020, the U.S. government authorized the emergency use of the first COVID-19 vaccine. Three days later, Margaret Klassens, a 96-year-old World War II Veteran in Massachusetts, became the first VA patient in the country to get the shot. The moment marked both a culmination and a turning point in the fight against COVID 19.
VA began preparing for this day in August 2020 when it assembled a COVID-19 Vaccine Integrated Project Team to plan for the vaccine’s distribution. In the months that followed, the agency coordinated the vaccinations of Veterans and staff, launched a campaign to combat vaccine hesitancy, and treated the waves of patients brought into VA medical facilities infected with the virus or its variants. VA also answered the government’s call to assist with the vaccination of the wider U.S. population under its “Fourth Mission.”
VA is responsible for performing three basic missions: delivering benefits, providing health care, and offering burial services to Veterans. In 1982, however, Congress added a fourth mission when it passed the Health Resources Sharing and Emergency Operation Act. Under the terms of this law, VA can furnish medical and hospital care to the public during times of natural disaster or national emergency. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and, in doing so, activated VA’s fourth mission. VA responded by supplying more than a million pieces of personal protective equipment to essential workers, admitting hundreds of seriously ill patients who were not Veterans to VA hospitals, and dispatching medical personnel to augment the staffs of state Veteran homes, community nursing homes, and other state and local facilities. Once vaccines became available, VA joined the nationwide mass vaccination campaign and delivered vaccines to people in communities across the nation and to employees at other Federal agencies. All-told, as of April 29, 2022, VA vaccinated over four million Veterans and nearly one hundred thousand non-Veterans.
In an appearance at the Disabled American Veterans national conference in 2021, VA Secretary Denis McDonough emphasized the agency’s commitment to its fourth mission. “We’re very proud of our Fourth Mission work. That has included vaccinating our federal partners, vaccinating additional health care providers, supplementing health care providers at facilities that have taken a particularly bad turn as it relates to COVID-19,” he stated. “All those things are things that we have done and will continue to do. We stand ready to help all of our partners, state, local and federal, to make sure that we get through this.”

The COVID-19 vaccine vial pictured at the top of this entry is from the box of Moderna vaccines used to give shots to Veterans at the VA Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. Each vial contained ten doses of the vaccine. These items are part of the VA History Office’s COVID-19 collection housed on the Dayton campus. The collection includes other artifacts, ephemera, documents, and oral history interviews that were acquired during the pandemic from offices and individuals across VA. To view more artifacts from the collection, visit VA History’s COVID-19 virtual exhibit.
By Katie Rories
Historian, Veterans Health Administration
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History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 88: Civil War Nurses
During the Civil War, thousands of women served as nurses for the Union Army. Most had no prior medical training, but they volunteered out of a desire to support family members and other loved ones fighting in the war. Female nurses cared for soldiers in city infirmaries, on hospital ships, and even on the battlefield, enduring hardships and sometimes putting their own lives in danger to minister to the injured.
Despite the invaluable service they rendered, Union nurses received no federal benefits after the war. Women-led organizations such as the Woman’s Relief Corps spearheaded efforts to compensate former nurses for their service. In 1892, Congress finally acceded to their demands.
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Object 87: Shoulder Patch for Veterans Administration Military Personnel in World War II
For a time during and after World War II, active duty military personnel were assigned to the Veterans Administration.
That assignment was represented by a blue circle with a golden phoenix rising from the ashes. This was the shoulder patch worn by the more than 1,000 physicians, dentists, and other medical professionals serving in the U.S. Army at VA medical centers.
This was the same patch worn by Gen. Omar Bradley during his time as VA administrator after the war concluded.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 86: The Roll of Honor
“The following pages are devoted to the memory of those heroes who have given up their lives upon the altar of their country, in defense of the American Union.”
So opened the preface to the first volume of the Roll of Honor, a compendium of over 300,000 Federal soldiers who died during the Civil War and were interred in national and other cemeteries. The genesis of this 27-volume collection published between 1865 and 1871 can be traced to Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the department he oversaw for a remarkable 21 years from 1861 to 1882.