Bye.

Hey, good afternoon, Everybody appreciate.

Everybody was here in the briefing room today, and then I understand we have about a dozen reporters who are on the phone line, so we will give our first crack at a Tele televised press conference.

So thanks for being here.

As the situation continues to evolve around the Cove in 19 Outbreak, we wanted to get to information about the changes happening.

The department impacting our service members.

I'll give a few updates, and then Dr Fredricks myself will take some of your questions.

First, I want to start with the latest D o d Corona virus numbers as of ah 0 500 Today there have been 37 reported cases, 18 military, 13 dependence, three civilian and three contractors We're continuing to monitor.

The situation will provide up Nate updates each day as we receive them.

As you know, On Friday, the deputy secretary Norquist released additional guidance on domestic travel for service members and D O.

D.

Personnel.

Effective today, through May 11th all domestic travel for military personnel will be halted unless it meets one of a number of waver criterias, including sent mission of Central travel or humanitarian reasons.

This will also restrict duty civilian hiring on D o.

D installations to persons who live within the immediate comedian area of the facility Secretary continues to state his top priority during the outbreak is to protect service members of their families and maintain our ability to complete our central missions.

And we're gonna take continue to take all of those those efforts.

I want to give a couple of additional updates.

Uh, today the department is given authority to the local commissary store directors to impose restrictions on purchasing high demand products.

This will be done in coordination with basic leadership.

The department is working to make sure that service members and their families living on base understand these changes and have access to the goods that they need.

Finally, I want to give you guys Ah, some updates on what we're doing here in the building starting today the secretary of the Deputy Secretary, our remaining physically separated.

So we are attempting to put a for lack of a better term Ah, bubble around the two of them.

That means that day and their staffs will only interact via teleconference.

We're screening people that entering Secretary Sweet and limiting the number of people who have access is well.

Earlier today, the CMO team.

I think some of you may have been on that hosted a tele town hall for residents of the Pentagon reservation to address the protective measures that we've put in place.

They got a bunch of really good questions from people on the reservation, which includes this building as well as I believe, 78 other buildings in the national Capital Region talking about force protection.

Health protection measures were going to do continue do events like that here and around the country to keep our people informed.

At this time.

I want to just thank a number of people who work on this problem for many weeks now.

So I believe we've had teams a number of different bases working on Corona virus issues, providing HHS support.

HHS at Dobbins, Miramar, Lackland Travis.

Those teams have done an outstanding job in what has been a very demanding situation, and they've continued Thio do a great job, and everyone here at the department appreciates that and then last want to thank the custodial staff at the Pentagon.

They've been asked over the last few weeks to really step up what they have done.

Thio help limit the spread of any infectious disease here.

And so I think, as you guys have seen, their increasing their rounds, that increasing the type of work they're doing on and that is to everybody's benefit here, and we appreciate that.

So with that, I'll, uh, see if General, you know, I would say, Let's go straight to question, sir, Aside from what the National Guard is doing in many states, eyes that is, a Defense Department considering making available to civilian agencies, medical facilities, medical equipment, medical personnel consideration.

So I think you guys are all familiar with how, ah, the request for assistance come into the department.

And so, so far we've received request for assistance from HHS specific to the quarantining and housing of individuals who are either evacuated from Wuhan, who Bay Province or the Grand Princess and the Diamond Princess, and then additionally, for the 11 feeder airports for individuals who flew back to the U.

S.

You need to be quarantined.

So that's the That's the one set of our phase that we have filled with regard to Corona virus we've not received any other ones at this time that we have responded to.

Our are doing.

We are looking at a number of different options with regard thio resource is and what we can do.

I would point out that the big benefit of the Department of Defense's logistics and planning support those are two things that we can we were able to provide a lot of assistance to.

There are other things where we'll take a look at it as they come in, but at this time, those were the only our phase that we've seen so far.

OK, so aside from the request itself, what you've made clear you haven't had any of this of its type.

But you're considering what you might do, what might be able to do it in the area of medical assistance.

So we've done a ah, look at our abilities and our resource is and what we can do.

Um, and where we think that we have capability to assist the civilian sector in this whole of government approach while still ensuring that we have the resources that are necessary to a take care of our personnel and their families and be to focus on our mission, our central missions that have to teach admissions.

And so we've we've done that analysis and are continuing to do it on will be providing that secretary has it and can provide it up.

Thio the President White House for help in making decisions as requests come in.

And if I if I could just add to that So you know, as you well know, during hurricane season or other times, we have plans on the shelf defense support called defense support to civil authorities.

And so have we looked at it?

Absolutely.

I mean, we do that every year, routinely preparing for a variety of natural disasters.

So, yes, we do have plans looking at the capabilities that we have.

And then if we're asked to provide them or if we're tasked to say what's with Roma possible, we can go back and look at those plans to be a different plan that 100 natural it is.

But again, from the from the department's perspective, you know, what we do is we look at what capabilities we have and how they might best meet the request that we get.

And that's why I think this is really important that, you know, if we're asked to do something, we look at what we have available on how best to support that.

So it's a little just concerned.

This is the closest I've been saying the next to somebody in about a week.

So it's throwing me off.

Sure.

How much slack is there in the military health system that you could actually provide to the civilian authorities?

You know, there are no doctors just lying around who are waiting to go to work.

They would presumably come from civilian hospitals.

You know, How many respirators do you have lying around?

I mean, how much can you actually support if you're asked S O that so Those are great questions, and those are the sorts of analysis that we're going through right now to identify what we can do.

And I want to emphasize the point that people have come up and said, you know, what about this idea?

What about that idea?

We're trying to step through each of those questions that we receive and then say, Here's what's within the Roma possible.

If we do this, then here's the consequence.

A great one that's come up is why don't we mobilize the Garden Reserve?

I think that's what you're talking about right now.

The challenge with that is you alluded to is if you mobilize the Garden 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 you know, whether it's a natural disaster or the Corona virus or anything else.

That's part of the trade off that we look at as we offer options going forward.

Okay, dude, General, give us some idea of the capacity that is out there within the Department of Defense.

How many hospital?

How many, Doctor, if it comes to that.

So we have 36 hospitals in the United States, and, uh, you know, from the standpoint of a domestic response 36 hospitals within the United States a CZ many of you are aware they're relatively small hospitals.

They're not 1000 bet hospitals, so they range in size.

Many of them are configured to support, as you might imagine, our immediate military needs.

So they take care of the active duty population and their families and some retirees.

We have some large facilities, like here in the D C area.

But Walter Reed that have much more diverse service is.

And we have a number of smaller facilities and more remote locations like Fort Wainwright in Alaska has a small hospital that offers obstetrics service's and basic community hospital type service is so it.

Unfortunately, the answer is it depends on the community.

And what the requirement waas to support the operational force in that community that has determined the size of the hospitals that we have.

And, I think publicly ask for the corps of Engineers to, uh, start constructing facilities.

What could the corps of engineers realistically, d'oh!

As a doctor, I'm not gonna be able to answer that question for the corps of Engineers.

I have to Yeah, I mean, well, one thing.

I just do the first question point out some of those hospitals that we do have a doctor kind of latitude, the way they're configured a lot of new NATO pediatric care beds in those hospitals out of that group of peds.

Our doctors air unsurprisingly, trained highly and traumatic injuries and dealing with traumatic injuries on DSO, 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 elder older persons who require a different type of attention that we normally do.

So that's all being looked at us.

How we can take the type of service is we normally provided the type of skills that we have and see what we can dio with.

Regard to the question about the governor's comment, where the governor's comments would not receive the Nora Fay or request Thio actually do any construction.

That would be something that we would look at.

ATTN This time.

I think there are some other options out there that we've seen private companies that are able to do some of the construction.

There's there, ah, other facilities.

But we have not been asked to take a look at that yet, but we're we're standing by Thio.

Look at our faces.

They come in and work with the White House on deciding how we best support those.

It's just Former Vice President Joe Biden floated the idea of the military building these 10th hospitals with 500 beds.

Is that one of the options that is being considered right now?

So we do have 10 hospitals there, deployable hospitals and, much as was just mentioned their challenges.

They're designed to take care of trauma patients in combat casualties.

And so, um, you know, we have a variety of capabilities, much like our fixed facility.

Hospitals or deployable hospitals vary in size, and the specific capabilities are tailored to whatever the mission is.

So we have supported humanitarian operations.

As you're well aware, in the past, we've supported relief efforts during natural disasters.

What, what?

We're trying to be very careful.

It is not over promising.

You know, we want to be factual about what we have are are fixed.

Facilities are designed to the force that we have there, not 1000 bed medical centers all over the United States.

There, for the most part, small community hospitals are deplorable.

Hospitals range in size and ranging capabilities and our very much focused and designed to take care of those in combat.

So as those air useful if we're asked to deploy them, we have great colleagues and very proud to serve with them on a CZ, Mr Hoffman said.

I think you know they'll deliver excellent care if asked to do so.

But the colleagues that we have in uniform primarily are focused on the specific military needs that we have done to make sure the troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have enough tests for Corona virus.

So I'm not aware of any effect was on the phone with the Centcom surgeon over the weekend.

I'm unaware of any lack of test that I believe there's been some concern about the fact that the equipment to run the test, that specific machine is not in Afghanistan, and that's true.

You know, we have a relatively small footprint in Afghanistan.

We have now 13 labs that are up and running with that machine around the world.

The closest went Afghanistan.

That's a military lab is our lab in Germany.

There are also other nations in the Middle East that have the specific type of equipment.

So what we do with any lab that we can't perform in a deployed environment as we fly it or ship it to the nearest lab that can perform it?

That doesn't mean that they're not getting tested.

I mean, we're doing The swabs were just not running, the exact they test itself in Afghanistan.

And to be clear, I had this conversation with General Mackenzie when he was here on Friday.

NASA that specific question.

And I think Centcom has put out a statement on this as well.

We're not aware of any individual in Afghanistan, despite some reporting out there.

Otherwise, that has indicated an inability to get tested Russian pretty confident that there they're able to get tested, be swab in country.

The sample sent to install to be tested in those test results reported back to the individual one.

A couple thing on the first question they just point out talking about tents and in 10 hospitals is once again the limiting factor being personnel.

So even if we are able to build tents for hospitals, we suddenly the doctors, we need the nurses.

We need the order.

Believes we need the equipment.

All that in there.

Um, And as the doctor mentioned, the general mentioned those individuals from our system would come from existing hospitals or the reserves.

And as you heard General Abrams discussed, I think it was on Thursday How he called up those doctors who were assigned to him.

But But we're not yet for deployed.

He called up those doctors.

They went over to help over and U S forces Korea.

In many cases, they came from domestic military facilities here.

And that's similar to what would happen with with the hospital like that.