Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed to reporters Wednesday that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had approved a new plan for COVID-19 testing within the military’s ranks that seeks to push the armed forces closer to the Department of Defense goal of testing 60,000 service members per day, reported the Washington Post.
“To get to the entire force, the 1.4 million active duty and the entire [National] Guard and Reserve, is going to take us into the summer, but I think we’ll get to the deploying, redeploying forces, the forces engaged, all of the tier one forces next month,” Hyten said.
Officials noted the first tier would be made up of personnel involved in “critical national capabilities,” such as troops in the US military’s nuclear forces and a number of Special Operations forces. The second tier is set to include troops currently assigned to combat zones and personnel presently involved in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic on US soil.
Troops making up the third tier are said to be those overseas “on priority missions” and others returning to the US from deployment, according to the Post. The remaining members of the armed forces will be placed in the fourth and final tier.
Hyten’s statements came alongside the Pentagon’s April 22 announcement of 82 additional confirmed novel coronavirus cases amongst its military personnel. The department’s news release detailed that over the past several weeks of testing for the virus, 3,578 service members have tested positive for COVID-19, and 1,073 have recovered from the disease. As of Wednesday, 85 infected military personnel are presently hospitalized.
Over the past several weeks, the bulk of the US military’s COVID-19 testing equipment has been primarily utilized at sites with known outbreaks, such as the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which has remained docked in Guam since sailors were evacuated from the aircraft carrier on March 27 and later quarantined. A shortage of testing supplies was also cited as a reason for the low amount of screenings to date.
“So we’re moving quickly. It is a supply issue right now, which is causing us not to be able to go down the full spectrum of all of the forces,” Hyten noted on Wednesday. “That’s why we came up with the tiered approach.”
Testing of all personnel in tier one is slated for completion by the end of this month, he added.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley expressed to reporters at a Pentagon briefing on April 14 that the department was aiming to have the capacity to conduct 60,000 novel coronavirus tests per day in June.
Those who test negative will not automatically be cleared to continue business as usual. Milley clarified that service members who are not positive for COVID-19 will still be ordered into a 14-day quarantine before operating equipment or participating in training.
“So there's a prioritization of the force for testing and quarantine to ensure that we have adequate capability and readiness to rapidly deploy if we need to for any given contingency,” Milley said, as reported by the Washington Examiner.
Citing a US Navy release, Business Insider reported Thursday that all sailors in the Roosevelt’s 4,800-member crew had been screened for the novel coronavirus, and at least 840 personnel tested positive for the contagious disease.
A new Expeditionary Medical Support System (EMEDS) facility is nearing completion on the grounds of the US Naval Hospital Guam and is slated to include 25 additional beds for Roosevelt sailors who need COVID-19-related treatment, according to the US Air Force.
