How will world’s most powerful military fight coronavirus threat?
- US military’s health care system is geared more toward handling combat casualties than infectious diseases
- At the latest count, the US military has 37 reported coronavirus cases, including 18 military personnel
The Pentagon is already helping combat the coronavirus outbreak in the United States and is considering ways to do more, even as it deals with an outbreak among its personnel.
However the US military expressed has caution about its ability to provide swift medical assistance to the American population after former vice-president Joe Biden called for a mobilisation using its hospitals and tents.
The Defence Department’s 36 hospitals in the US are better-suited to treating battlefield traumas than contagious diseases and are designed to meet the “immediate” needs of service members and their families, Air Force Brigadier General Paul Friedrichs, the surgeon who advises the Joint Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. He said the same is true for “deployable” hospitals.
“We do not have any 500-bed hospitals designed for infectious disease outbreaks,” Friedrichs said. “That does not exist in the inventory. What we’re trying to be very careful of is not over-promising.”
The remarks came after Biden, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, said in his debate with Bernie Sanders on Sunday night that the US military should be called upon to do more to help respond to the spread of the virus.
“The answer is I would call out the military,” Biden said. “They have the capacity to provide this surge, help that hospitals’ need - and that is needed across the nation. They have the capacity to build 500-bed hospitals” and “tents that are completely safe and secure, and provide the help to get it done to anybody.”