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Veterans Affairs officials announced Friday they have surpassed 3,000 deaths among coronavirus patients amid a weeks-long jump in fatality announcements for the department.
About one-third of the deaths have been reported in the last 40 days alone. VA officials have dismissed questions about the recent spike in fatalities by noting that some of the deaths may have occurred earlier than publicly reported, making exact case counts for individual weeks or months unreliable.
Still, the department announced 820 deaths among patients due to coronavirus complications in August alone, the highest monthly total announced since the start of the pandemic last spring and up more than 67 percent from the number of deaths reported in July.