Washington (CNN) Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie confirmed during his testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday that one veteran is being treated for the coronavirus at a VA facility in Palo Alto, California, and said the agency has a section of the campus set up to receive veterans who have the virus.

"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," Wilkie told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee.

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 country.

After the hearing, Wilkie, who is part of the White House task force addressing the potential of a pandemic, stressed 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 told CNN.

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