Despite pleas for U.S. military assistance from governors and mayors across the country, Defense Secretary Mark Esper cautioned March 25 that the Pentagon is not in a position to domestically deploy nearly enough medical resources to address the scale of the coronavirus outbreak (+65K in U.S.). He warned that the pandemic will "inevitably" alter the global strategic balance, and can’t be allowed to overtake DoD’s No. 1 priority: National security. SECDEF’s remarks come amid growing calls for military assistance for everything from extra beds to ventilators. It's a crisis President Trump refers to as a "war" with an "invisible enemy." In an interview with NPR, Esper said the military doesn’t have the resources that “many people think (it has), when it comes to medical capacity … maybe a few thousand (hospital) beds ... at most." NY’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo estimates his state may need as many as 90,000 hospital beds. “The president says it's a war," Cuomo said March 24, so, “act like it's a war." SECDEF told reporters he’s talked to as many as 10 governors, and that each requested military field hospitals. "We clearly can't meet everybody's needs with what we have in our inventory," Esper said. The Army is already preparing to deploy field hospitals to New York and Washington state. Each hospital has 248 beds, but these hospitals are "geared toward treating trauma patients” not people with infectious diseases, he said. The Navy is deploying two hospital ships, USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy, to NY and LA respectively. Each ship has 1,000 beds. Neither will treat coronavirus patients, but rather to handle seriously ill patients, other than those with the virus, to reduce the workload on area hospitals. It’s been a balancing act for the Pentagon. Esper described his top two priorities: Protecting service members and safeguarding the military's mission capabilities. If he can do that, he can fulfill what he called priority No. 3: "provide full support to the whole of government."
VIRUS NUMBERS: The military as of March 24 had recorded 227 cases of the coronavirus. In an effort to control the numbers, SECDEF signed an order freezing the movements of all U.S. troops abroad for 60 days. The Navy has about a third (57) of the military's coronavirus patients. DoD reported on Tuesday, 174 positive cases among service members. Data provided by the individual services total 170 cases. Nine have required hospitalization. Seventeen have recovered. The Army (44) and Air Force (43) have been the next hardest hit as of March 24. The Marines reported 26 cases in the same time period. DoD also reported 61 military dependents have the virus, 59 civilian workers and 27 contractors. One of those contractors recently died. (Sources: NPR & Military.com 03/25/20) https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821606478/defense-secretary-esper-says-military-has-limited-capacity-to-provide-hospital-b and https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/03/25/navy-hardest-hit-military-service-coronavirus-outbreak.html
