WASHINGTON _ Marine Corps veteran David Kelly needed a life-saving blood transfusion. His choices were to go to a VA urgent care clinic or its main medical center, which during the coronavirus pandemic he wanted to avoid.
Kelly, 63, has leukemia and aplastic anemia and critically needed a transfusion from the nearby Fayetteville, N.C., Veterans Affairs health care system. The transfusion would provide the healthy oxygen-carrying blood cells his body needs, but no longer produces.
Kelly decided the clinic would be his best bet, because he could get two units of blood without being admitted into the larger VA hospital _ where there would be more patients and more chances for exposure to the coronavirus.
