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DoD Ready to Help With Coronavirus, but Capability Limited

Pennsylvania Commonwealth microbiologist Kerry Pollard performs a manual extraction of the coronavirus inside the extraction lab at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories on Friday, March 6, 2020.
MARCH 17, 2020 – As concerns of coronavirus grow, the Defense Department stands ready to provide support wherever it’s asked to do so, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs said.

“The Department of Defense is ready, willing and able to support civilian authorities to the greatest extent possible with the direction of the president,” Jonathan Rath Hoffman said during a Pentagon news conference today. “We just want to make sure that the conversation that is being had is informed by the facts of what is possible, what is not, and what those trade-offs are.”

While the U.S. military is often depicted in movies and on television as having the capacity to stand up vast medical capabilities at a moment’s notice, both Hoffman and Air Force Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Paul Friedrichs, the Joint Staff surgeon, cautioned against overestimating the department’s capacity to provide medical capabilities to support a contagion like coronavirus.

Hoffman told reporters that DOD has only about 2% to 3% of the number of hospital beds that the private sector has. The department runs only 36 hospitals in the United States, Friedrichs said, many of which are ill-suited for caring for large numbers of contagious patients.

“Many of them are configured to support, as you might imagine, our immediate military needs,” Friedrichs said. “They take care of the active duty population and their families and some retirees. Some large facilities such as the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, have much more diverse services,” he added. “We have a number of smaller facilities in more remote locations, like Fort Wainwright, Alaska, [which] has a small hospital that offers obstetrical services and basic community hospital type services,” the Joint Staff surgeon said.

Hoffman pointed out that military doctors are better trained for wartime injuries than for treating communicable illnesses such as COVID-19.

“Our doctors are, unsurprisingly, trained highly in traumatic injuries and [for] dealing with traumatic injuries,” he said. “We have a much younger population that we’re dealing with treating in our hospitals. And so all of these kind of factor into what is that capability we have for a potential outbreak that generally has been more devastating to older persons who require a different type of attention than we normally do.”

Even military tent hospitals that can be set up ad-hoc to respond to an emergency are designed for trauma care, not contagious diseases, Friedrichs said.

“We do have tent hospitals. They are deployable hospitals. … The challenge is they’re designed to take care of trauma patients and combat casualties,” he said. “We have supported humanitarian operations. … We’ve supported relief efforts during natural disasters. But what we’re trying to be very careful of is not over-promising, you know. We want to be factual about what we have.

“Our fixed facilities are designed to the force that we have,” he continued. “There are not thousand-bed medical centers all over the United States. They are, for the most part, small community hospitals. Our deployable hospitals range in size and range in capabilities that are very much focused and designed to take care of those in combat.”

While both the National Guard and the Reserve components have medical doctors that can be called out to provide support, if needed, both Hoffman and Friedrichs noted that medical personnel in the Guard and Reserve are often also medical personnel in their private-sector jobs.

“If you mobilize the Guard and Reserve medical personnel from their civilian jobs, they’re no longer in their civilian jobs, and that directly impacts the community where they worked, and that’s the trade-off that — whether it’s a natural disaster, or the coronavirus or anything else — that’s part of the trade-off that we look at as we offer options going forward,” Friedrichs said.

So far, Hoffman said, the Defense Department has received requests for assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services for quarantining and housing of people who were evacuated from China, those who had been on the Grand Princess and Diamond Princess cruise ships, and those who flew back to the United States through 11 feeder airports and needed to be quarantined.

“We have not received any other [requests] at this time that we have responded to,” he said.

Hoffmann told reporters that DOD has seen 37 reported cases of COVID-19: 18 military personnel, 13 military family members, three civilian employees and three contractors.

To stem further spread of the coronavirus, he said, the department has issued updated guidance on domestic travel. Effective today though May 11, all domestic travel for military personnel is halted unless it’s for mission-essential travel or humanitarian reasons.

Additionally, he said, DOD has given directors of installation commissaries additional authorities to manage their inventory to provide the best service to military members and their families.

“Today the department has given authority to local commissary store directors to impose restrictions on purchasing high-demand products,” Hoffman said. “This will be in coordination with base leadership. The department is working to make sure that service members and their families on base understand these changes and have access to the goods that they need.”

BY C. TODD LOPEZ, DOD NEWS

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2022 Marine Commandant’s Retention Program

AUGUST 10, 2022 – July 31, 2022 marked the end of the inaugural Commandant’s Retention Program for FY23. The program opened on June 17, 2022 and offered a streamlined retention process and enhanced incentives for the Corps’ top-performing first-Term Marines. The CRP has exceeded all expectation and has been a tremendous success. The overall goal […]

Army Develops Future Soldier Preparatory Course

JULY 27, 2022 – In response to the most challenging recruiting environment since the start of the all-volunteer force in 1973, the Army is implementing an innovative new program to prepare recruits who are en-route to initial military training to meet or exceed our rigorous standards. The Future Soldier Preparatory Course pilot program, which is […]

Top 5 University Scholarships for Military in the UK

JUNE 20, 2022 – The cost of a college education can be daunting and unaffordable for many university students in the UK. For the students who have set their hearts on joining the military, there are several scholarships available for them.  These scholarships help military students overcome the financial challenges of attending college. A University […]

Federal Hiring Summit for Transitioning Service Members

AUGUST 10, 2022 – Commander Navy Installation Command Headquarters, Fleet and Family Support Center is hosting a federal hiring summit Aug. 15-18. Although the summit is hosted by the Navy, all military personnel and their spouses can attend this virtual event. Those who are preparing for their end of service or actively transitioning out of […]

Military Consumer Month Focuses on Financial Literacy

JULY 29, 2022 – With inflation soaring in the U.S. and elsewhere, many among the military community, including reservists and veterans, are struggling to make financial ends meet and are in need of a good battle plan to beat their budget foes. Anyone in such a predicament would do well to employ the Department of […]

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