Vice President Mike Pence said the Army Corps of Engineers would be on-hand to help expand medical capacity during the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking at a White House news conference along with President Trump on Tuesday, Pence talked about the ways the Defense Department could assist with the crisis. Earlier on Tuesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the Corps to help as the state worries about bed shortages.
Pence said the Corps would be able to help “renovate existing buildings” for medical use and noted that the Pentagon is inventorying field hospitals known as “MASH” units.
“We have resources in that part of the country that we can move. And as governors make these requests, we will process them, bring them to the president,” Pence said.
“But there are two different lanes that DOD can provide, in addition to many medical supplies to augment our national reserves, and the president has tasked us to evaluate, make available, and consider every request from governors from either field hospitals, expanding facilities, or the Army Corps of Engineers that can retrofit existing buildings.”
Trump interjected, saying the Corps is “very prepared to do as we say,” and added that “the field hospitals go up very quickly, we have them, we have all of this equipment in stock.”
The vice president’s comments counter the Pentagon’s own claims about the specialized capability and medical personnel required to boost civilian capacity.
“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 said at a Pentagon briefing Monday. “We do have tent hospitals … The challenge is, they are designed to take care of trauma patients and combat casualties.”
In the United States, there have been 5,204 cases of the coronavirus and 92 deaths, according to the latest reading by the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
