page_title: COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
section_title: Military
hierarchical_section_title: COVID-19 pandemic in the United States / Responses / Military
caption_attribution_description: English: USNS Comfort docked on the west side of Manhattan, New York City, on 1 April 2020. The Comfort was dispatched to treat non-COVID-19 patients during the coronavirus pandemic.
context_page_description: The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019. As of August 2020, there were over 180,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. The first confirmed local transmission was recorded in January 2020, while the first known deaths were reported in February. By the end of March, cases had been confirmed in all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and all inhabited U.S. territories except American Samoa.
  Within a week after China announced that it found a cluster of infections from the virus in Wuhan, the CDC offered to send them a team of experts to help contain the spread, but they refused the offer. The US outbreak was officially declared a public health emergency on January 31, and restrictions were placed on flights arriving from China. The initial U.S. response to the pandemic was otherwise slow, in terms of preparing the healthcare system, stopping other travel, and testing for the virus. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump downplayed the threat posed by the virus and claimed the outbreak was under control.
  On March 13, President Trump declared a national emergency.
context_section_description: On February 3, an unclassified Army briefing document on the coronavirus projected that in an unlikely "black swan" scenario, "between 80,000 and 150,000 could die." The black swan theory correctly stated that asymptomatic people could "easily" transmit the virus, a belief that was presented as outside medical consensus at the time of the briefing. The briefing also stated that military forces could be tasked with providing logistics and medical support to civilians, including "provid[ing] PPE (N-95 Face Mask, Eye Protection, and Gloves) to evacuees, staff, and DoD personnel".
  In mid-March, the government began having the military add its health care capacity to impacted areas. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), under the authority of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), leased private buildings nationwide. They included hotels, college dormitories, and larger open buildings, which were converted into temporary hospitals. The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City was quickly transformed into a 2,000-bed care facility on March 23, 2020.The Army also set up field hospitals in various affected cities.
  Some of these facilities had ICUs for Covid patients, while others served non-coronavirus patients to allow established hospitals to concentrate on the pandemic. At the height of this effort, U.S. Northern Command had deployed nine thousand military medical personnel.
  On March 18, in addition to the many popup hospitals nationwide, the Navy deployed two hospital ships, USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort, which were planned to accept non-coronavirus patients transferred from land-based hospitals, so those hospitals could concentrate on virus cases. On March 29, citing reduction in on-shore medical capabilities and the closure of facilities at the Port of Miami to new patients, the U.S. Coast Guard required ships carrying more than fifty people to prepare to care for sick people onboard.
  On April 6, the Army announced that basic training would be postponed for new recruits. Recruits already in training would continue what the Army is calling "social-distanced-enabled training". However, the military, in general, remained ready for any contingency in a COVID-19 environment. By April 9, nearly 2,000 service members had confirmed cases of COVID-19.
  In April, the Army made plans to resume collective training. Social distancing of soldiers is in place during training, assemblies, and transport between locations. Temperatures of the soldiers are taken at identified intervals, and measures are taken to immediately remediate affected soldiers.
  On June 26, 2020, the VA reported 20,509 cases of COVID-19 and 1,573 deaths among patients (plus more than two thousand cases and 38 deaths among its own employees). As of July 2020, additional Reserve personnel are on 'prepare-to-deploy orders' to Texas and California.
caption: USNS Comfort, docked in Manhattan
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