The Department of Defense has not yet been asked to prepare tent hospitals like those described by former Vice President Joe Biden in the Democratic debate Sunday night, nor is the military capability designed for high numbers of infectious disease patients, a chief military doctor said.
“We don’t have any 500-bed hospitals designed for infectious disease. That does not exist in the inventory,” Joint Staff Surgeon Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Friedrichs told members of the press at a Pentagon briefing Monday.
“We do have tent hospitals. They are deployable hospitals,” he said. “The challenge is, they are designed to take care of trauma patients.”
Friedrichs said that the Pentagon’s 36 fixed hospitals are “relatively small” and are designed to support operational forces in the communities where they are located.
Overall, Department of Defense beds represent 2% to 3% of all hospital beds in the country, estimated Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman, also at the briefing.
The hospitals are accustomed to treating a much younger population than the older, higher-risk COVID-19 patients.
Doctors, in turn, are trained in trauma and combat wounds.
Standing up tent hospitals or using hospital ships would also require appropriate medical personnel, the officials explained. Such personnel are already working elsewhere.
Calling up Reserve and Guard units would remove doctors from their civilian roles, an important factor when evaluating the military’s capabilities to assist in the civilian outbreak response.
“The big benefit of the Department of Defense is logistics and planning support,” said Hoffman.
Hoffman said the Pentagon has looked at capabilities based on disaster relief scenarios, but he would not disclose what capacity, how quickly it could be stood up, or how many respirators the DOD has in inventory.
Hoffman said the administration has not called on the DOD for assistance beyond helping to quarantine citizens evacuated several weeks ago from Wuhan and the Grand Princess and Diamond Princess cruise ships through 11 feeder airports.
Friedrichs said there have been no gaps yet that would require the DOD to leverage military assets.
“The good news right now is as our country as a whole is responding to this outbreak, we have not seen huge demand signals coming to DOD yet,” he said.
The DOD confirmed that, as of 5 a.m. Monday morning, 37 personnel globally have tested positive for COVID-19, and 495 personnel have been tested globally as of Sunday morning. Tests are being evaluated at 13 DOD labs worldwide.
Among the infected are 18 military, 13 dependents, three civilian employees, and three contractors. None work at the main Pentagon building, which was upgraded over the weekend to a new health protection condition, imposing new preventive measures.
Additional cleaning of bathrooms and surfaces was announced, along with the closure of common spaces, and many employees were encouraged to work from home.
Some eateries were shuttered Monday, and the salad bar was closed, but parking lots were still full surrounding the Pentagon building. No additional measures were taken to screen badged individuals, but visitors and tour groups have been halted.
Across the 48 buildings that form the “Pentagon reservation,” there have been two positive COVID-19 tests. One was a contractor working at one of the buildings. Friedrichs said that, after about six days, he was “doing fine.” The other case is that of a Marine at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
Hoffman said Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist are now maintaining “physical separation” as a precaution, and their staffs only communicate by teleconference. Access to their secure suites has also been limited.
