Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told Fox News on Tuesday night that the U.S. military was ready to jump in and help manage the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. if the situation continues to deteriorate.
Esper made the remarks during “Special Report” with Fox News anchor Bret Baier as confirmed cases in the U.S. soared past 6,000 cases and 100 deaths.
“We are making available our field hospitals and our hospital ships as they become available,” Esper said. “We, of course, can — we have the National Guard that has already been activated in 18 states. Nearly 2,000 Guardsmen are available. And, also, we’re doing considerable work in terms of our vaccines and therapeutics.”
“I had the chance today to go to Fort Detrick in Maryland,” Esper continued. “It is a world-class facility. The U.S. Army there has been on the cutting edge of a number of infectious diseases. As you may recall, they helped with the solution to both Ebola and Zika. And they are working pretty aggressively to come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus.”
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TRANSCRIPT:
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: The Pentagon is heavily involved in the coronavirus response and the search for a vaccine, in fact.
Here to talk about all of that is Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He joins us from the Pentagon.
Mr. Secretary, thanks for being here.
MARK ESPER, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Thanks, Bret. Thank you for having me.
BAIER: I understand you just got off the phone with the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
Can you tell us about that conversation? The governor had been wanting to deploy Army Corps of Engineers. Will you?
ESPER: Sure.
Let me say one thing, first of all. I want to assure all of your viewers that the United States military remains ready and capable of defending the American people, protecting the nation and safeguarding our interests abroad.
And, in that context, our second focus has been on supporting the President and the whole-of-government approach to the coronavirus.
Now, in that context, I have had a call with a number of governors this — today, this morning. Later today, I had a call with Governor Cuomo. We had a very good conversation.
He is very interested in getting the Corps of Engineers engaged, because what he sees is a deficit, if you will, in hospital beds in New York state as he looks ahead to what may be coming.
I gave him my full commitment that we would get the Corps of Engineers up there soonest to assess the problem and see how we can help out.
BAIER: So, today, you announced you would be giving 5 million respirator masks and 2,000 ventilators to HHS to slow the outbreak.
You also said that that’s just a drop in the bucket. What else could the U.S. military do, potentially?
ESPER: Sure, Bret.
We’re leaning in, in a number of ways. So we’re offering up the ventilators, protective gear, as — some of which you mentioned. We are making available our field hospitals and our hospital ships as they become available.
We, of course, can — we have the National Guard that has already been activated in 18 states. Nearly 2,000 Guardsmen are available. And, also, we’re doing considerable work in terms of our vaccines and therapeutics.
I had the chance today to go to Fort Detrick in Maryland. It is a world-class facility. The U.S. Army there has been on the cutting edge of a number of infectious diseases. As you may recall, they helped with the solution to both Ebola and Zika.
And they are working pretty aggressively to come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus.
BAIER: Well, what are the estimates there? Tell me about that Fort Detrick visit. What are they saying? Is it along the same lines of a year to 18 months? Or are they hoping to get something quicker?
ESPER: They’re still looking at a 12-to-18-month period, although there are outside companies that think they can cut that time down a little bit, in which case, again, the U.S. military would be standing by ready to support and accelerate any type of production efforts. But I think the 12-to-18-month timeline is what we’re looking at.
Now, in the meantime, they’re also working on therapeutics, ways to address symptoms, et cetera. And that work is under way as well. And then the third part of this — and we’re working very closely, I should say, with HHS — is accelerating the development of new testing mechanisms, so we can do testing for Americans in volume.
And that seems to be very promising too.
BAIER: U.S. military members infected went from 18 to 36 today, doubling.
How worried are you? You have got obviously Navy sailors on ships. You have got some on submarines. Obviously, there’s a lot of close quarters when you talk about different elements of the U.S. military. How worried, as defense secretary, are you about the spread of this virus?
ESPER: I am concerned about our force and our families. That’s my top priority in — with regard to the coronavirus, followed by maintaining our mission capabilities.
But I will tell you, we also have a very young, robust and healthy Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. And I think they’re sustaining this pretty well.
We’re also taking a lot of actions that have been devised by CDC into account and implementing them, such as social distancing, changing our habits, using sanitary wipes to wipe down equipment and doorknobs and things like that. We’re taking a number of precautions.
When you — when you escalate up to ships at sea, for example, when a crew goes aboard, they have 14 days at least between stops, between port calls, so that they’re not transmitting the virus ashore.
So we’re taking any number of measures to make sure that we protect the force and we sustain our ability to react and respond to any challenges or any threats.
BAIER: Mr. Secretary, I guess the question I get most — and we’re going to deal with viewers’ questions in a segment or two about, how bad could this get? And how different is it from H1N1? And what is the difference?
We listen to, obviously, all the experts say about the contagious nature of it, the fact that the elderly and also the immune-deficient really get hit hard.
But you have been in these classified briefings. How bad could it get?
ESPER: Look, I think what you’re hearing publicly from the CDC is what I’m hearing privately as well in terms of the range of estimates.
I think the decisive action that President Trump took here in the last 24 hours, 48 hours to ask the American people to stand down, to stay in for the next 15 days, to avoid large groups, will go a long way towards breaking the cycle, if we can, and flattening out that curve.
And that’s all the same things I’m hearing privately from our experts. From DOD’s perspective, again, I need to maintain the force, maintain our national military mission capabilities. And we’re taking all positive actions to do such that we have plans in place. We have been implementing them now for several weeks.
And we’re also wanting to lean forward and support, again, the whole-of-government approach to assist the American people.
BAIER: Last thing.
I know where we are now with the guidelines out of the CDC. But have you been asked to look at options how the U.S. military would deal with some sort of national quarantine or factor into that at all?
ESPER: Well, what we’re looking at is not necessarily a national quarantine, but how can we help affected areas, whether it’s states or localities?
Our first line of defense right now is the National Guard. I was a Guardsman for many years, so I know their mission. They’re doing a great job. And, like I said, I talked to a few governors today about how we can improve the mission.
But we also have other capabilities, such as our hospital ships, our field hospitals, our deployable equipment and assets, and the Reserves, and the active component, if it gets to that, to assist localities.
The challenge we face, though, is so much of our gear and our capabilities are focused toward trauma. And, at the same time, those same hospitals, they often draw from the Reserves, which means the civilian work force.
So, we’re very conscious, as we deploy field hospitals, that we’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul when it comes to medical professionals. So, as we sort through the problems, as we respond to states and cities and localities, we want to make sure we’re conscious of what we’re doing, and that we’re not creating problems elsewhere in the force.
BAIER: Defensive Secretary Mark Esper, Mr. Secretary, we appreciate your time.
ESPER: Thanks, Bret.