Is this who wants to be a millionaire . It is running a lot better right now. Phone,ave folks on the is that right . What i will do is for all of the folks on the phone, this is ryan mccarthy. I will start with some opening comments. Q a we will do an open up to answer questions. Weve got to get out of here no later than 1600 and get back to the office. Let me make a couple remarks. Thank you for coming. We are trying to bring an update on the covid19 response efforts to protect our people, maintain Mission Readiness and support the government effort. To provide these updates as routinely as we can. We will work out a rhythm that is appropriate. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible and keep an open line of communication about what the army is doing. On march 19, currently the u. S. Army has 45 cases. This number includes 21 soldiers, six da civilians, eight family members, and 10 contractors. Crisis,ng in times of helping restore peace in times of chaos, and organizing against threat is what the army does best. We have 191,000 soldiers operating on missions worldwide, and must preserve our ability to meet the needs of the nation. This means we are ensuring that overseas,those including unique geographic constraints, offer protection. We are altering exercise training and daytoday operations to ensure safety for all. To meet the intent of the secretary of defense, we are lined against three lines of effort prevent, detect, and treat. To prevent the spread of virus, we must adhere to the social distancing guidelines from the cdc such as quarantining and handwashing. To eating together, working out together, and being in horseshoe formations. Yourrs, we must change behavior and prevent the spread of the virus. This is the reality of now. Of our to the examples commanding in italy and korea, who have effectively stopped virus from spreading by taking proper and aggressive measures. We could not be more proud of their actions. We have one class scientist working on the coronavirus vaccines. We have tremendous collaboration and all of our efforts. Our organization, such as the medical research and develop and command are experimenting with the vaccine, and are currently in tests. The army is collaborating with the private sector and other Government Entities on five tracks of the vaccine with two dozen candidates. Some are headed toward human testing. Compile as much extensive information as possible to combat the current virus. The detection front, our organization in concert with external entities are working rapidly to increase testing, and with a widened aperture, we contested a higher rate. Facilities with chemical laboratories certified to conduct covid19 testing. Our capacity will increase because they are working on supplemental funding and the defense asked. We have concepts in place to get us north of 16,000 per day as we procure additional instrument asian. The army corps of engineers is working with state governments in 13 states and we will reach 18 by this evening, to provide planning and Concept Development on behalf of fema to support the augmentation and enhanced addition,sponse to in installation hospitals are recalibrating protocols to rapidly assess and treat patients while working toward increasing capacity for larger volumes of infections if needed. Preparedeceived the be mission to respond, and should the need arise for additional medical support, we are ready. Additionally, we are working through the second and Third Order Effects of covid19 and subsequent response. You dont have to be infected to be affected by the virus and we understand the strain that comes with decisions being made. We are reevaluating policies in place. These range from adjusting combat training rotations, delaying moves and providing assistance for unexpected costs for families. Moving recruiting to a virtual platform. We are adopting an Information Age approach to things like graduations. Protect our for some families, it creates the conditions to defeat the virus. I would like to point out today that the army, in a joint effort with the navy, conducted a longrange flight of a hypersonic glide body missile. This is a significant achievement and a testament to the army being prepared to fight today across a range of threats from adversarial actors to strands of a pandemic. We are proud of the force and happy to take your questions. For either of you gentlemen, did you say that you are moving to procuring only, are you recruiting . Ical yes, we are. We are going to basically virtual recruiting. Much of that is done on social media and that allows us to protect our soldiers and the new recruits. So yes, we are. So you are closing recruiting stations as of today . Is happening as we speak. I cant attest to every recruiting station but that is what we are doing over this week , and the next couple of days that is what you will see. But we are moving to i would say virtual recruiting. I have a broader question for the secretary. The experts say you can anticipate that the spread of the virus will only accelerate and is likely to not exclude the military. Ofm wondering what kind worstcase scenario you foresee for the army in terms of how it will have to adjust . We are taking this daytoday pewter a lot of this is looking at the trend data as to how great it will go. Things we learned from general abrams in korea and also in italy is that you create safety bubbles and keep uniform formations intact and ultimately see if you can ride this out. Will this be a seasonal flu . Will it reverberate or boomerang in the fall . So we are keeping the formations intact enforce healthy and will adjust as we learn more. You dont have a specific worstcase situation you are planning for . Secretary mccarthy we are learning more every day and looking at options, but we need to collect more data. I would add to the secretary, what we found in italy and korea were very strong measures where we are screening, separating, washing our hands and we are quarantined as soon as anyone comes up with any sign that they may be affected. , canr the Surgeon General you tell us how many Army Personnel are in fact in isolation or quarantine or however you define it . How many people are in that status of isolation . If you happen to know how many you are awaiting test results on, we have all seen medical data emerge that dr. Birx is talking about, younger people being asymptomatic but potentially susceptible to becoming ill. Im wondering if that makes you theink your calculations, military assumption of a young, healthy force. Does this make you rethink that . And for the army corps, could you bring us uptodate on your discussions with Governor Cuomo in new york. Right now we have a few soldiers in our medical Treatment Facilities. The exact number as of yesterday was eight. This afternoon it could go higher. Again, those that we are the soldiers that have been identified as positive for covid are in proper treatment and care in our medical facilities. As far as hitting the army and our soldiers who are at a younger age, you are absolutely correct. We have conducted and implemented our pandemic Emergency Preparedness plans. We are prepared for an increased wave. Every medical Treatment Facility and every Installation Commander has come together, and we have our pandemic Emergency Preparedness plans, which expand in worstcase scenarios if more of our soldiers get impacted and our beneficiary population. Aside from the positives, can you say how many personnel are in some kind of presumptive, protective isolation or quarantine until they pass this 14day period . You are talking like, troops coming from overseas . I would just say this. The numbers change every day. Every Senior Commander. I dont have a number, because it changes hourly. Hisy Senior Commander on installation in the continental United States has to create isolation facilities and selfquarantine facilities. So the better part of seven to 10 days ago, Senior Commanders had to start doing that. You had to go find those facilities. Some are empty barracks. Some are other facilities on each of these installations. So that when people do come back from overseas, because we do have people returning from overseas, that they can go to selfquarantine if they exhibit symptoms. And then we can keep some units together, so they go to the same dining facility, they are in the same location, but they are isolated from the general population. Both on post and off post. Can we get a quick update on new york . Sure. Barbara, before i talk about a specific state, i think its important to lay out the concept because youve not heard this and we will talk about this a lot. The corps of engineers work for dod, but we are representing fema under direct Mission Assignments that states send to fema and then send back to me for taskers. This is an unbelievably complicated problem and there is no way to do this with a complicated solution. We need something super simple. Our concept here is a standard design. This is the approved design. It has been through hhs, briefed members of the white house and fema. We want to go into existing facilities primarily. Places that are out there, m going to make it simple hotels, College Dormitories and perhaps large spaces. I will give you an example of a small room and a large room. We need to go into these hotels are empty. The people dont have jobs. We would cut a contract to be able to have the state set up a lease with that facility and then we would take the building over in a short amount of days and we would go in and turn this into an iculike facility. There are four different phases. The state has to nominate facilities in a prioritized order. I will talk about Governor Cuomo in a minute. Number two is the army corps of engineers has to modify that facility. We can going to other details and questions, but it goes back to being able to change the pressure in certain hotel rooms to be able to have a negative pressure in a hotel room. The third thing is you have to put supplies in there, and fema working with hhs has come up that every Single Hotel Room with a list would get the same amount of supplies. They would already be there. The fourth step is to staff it. This has to be a state job. The state has to put the people in there. You have to clean it and train it. You have all been in hotels, think of the second floor in a standard hotel. The rooms would be like a hotel room and we would build nurses stations and the halls and have all the equipment, wireless going to the nurses station so you can monitor how it is going to work. Let me correlate this back to new york. We want to use new york as the standard center. Governor cuomo said, what can i do . I said the biggest thing you can do is identify facilities. I said i need one tonight, three by tomorrow night, so we got turned on by the governor, got money from fema to go into buildings tuesday night. We did the Javits Center yesterday and were in sunni schools yesterday. Today my engineers were walking 10 buildings, five hotels and five open spaces, to figure out what does right look like. Then we give this design to a contractor and he cites that design. If it is a hotel with four floors, they change it a little different. If it has central air, we change it. Most governors say their peak will be the middle of april. This isnt taking all the time to do it, it is what is barely the most important things we need to do and come up with a good enough solution. I will leave it there. We can talk later in more detail. Do you have the money to do this . Money is not a problem. Fema has given us the capability. The secretary talked about the 13 other states. That is why we are there. We are asking governors tonight , what are your priorities . We are in 50 states. We can go into other states right now and do these assessments as we need to. I will defer back to the secretary. I want to get back to the testing. You talked about 810 samples so far at these nine Treatment Facilities, you could get to 16,000 per day. Would that be for the army and dependents, civilians, who would be testing . A couple of things. We are talking about creating a test capability to be able to run a test through machine. The labs i referenced before, you have the scientific background to take the positive test out and extract all of the information required. There are a lot of pieces throughout the test continuing. Test continuum. Some of it is just actual machines where you plug in the sample in, and in 45 minutes it computes positive or negative. We are going to buy more machines. Then you also have the swab, it starts with the swab, you put it in a machine, the machine computes, but there are scientific steps that go after that. I would defer you to the medical professions. There are pieces in the supply chain that medical research and Development Command are going to help procure to increase capacity. As secretary asper said, the department of defense, over and above taking care of the force, to support the civilian population. It is as much as increasing our stocks as much as supporting from a national perspective. How long until you get to the 16,000 per day ballpark . Within the next three weeks. However, we have the capability of nine medical centers. We are adding increased capability by adding a fusion piece to it. That will increase outputs tremendously. In addition, we have small medical Treatment Facilities we are looking at expanding and getting capability there also, hopefully in 30 days. We are going to go on the phone lines, we have actually. Yes, thank you. I have a twopart question. I want to hear what impact you are hearing from industry, that the crisis will impact manufacturing and production line challenges. And after the White House Press conference, it is still unclear if the president has invoked the defense production act. Aboutu in discussion producing medical equipment at this time . A couple of questions there. We are working with the Defense Industrial base as well as congress about the funding as well as the increase of capability, everything from continuing the development of Weapons Systems we have on contract, so how can you work out contractually, some states that are not going back to work like pennsylvania and others . We are working on issues there and i will have to potentially work with states and unions and that is ongoing. With respect to the defense production act for medical supplies, those conversations are underway. But there are elements of this where you could turn to a supplier and say, fill the orders for the materials associated for another manufacture manufacturer to make it at scale, and there are other elements of turning to american industry and asking them to make a product specific. They are going through administrative Work Associated with that, and you will hear a lot more soon. We are going to hear from david. Two separate questions. One, if you stop virtual recruiting, how close are you to stopping basic training . Im sorry, if youve closed recruiting stations, how close are you to stopping basic training . And two, in the timeline just described for new york in terms of renovating existing buildings, how many days are we talking about before a contract is let to a contractor to do the actual work and the work begins . Let me take the first one on basic training, initial military training. We are continuing to send soldiers to initial military training. We have extensive procedures in place. It starts at the state and does an assessment of where the state is as far as covid19. They are screened in the state and then they move to the military entrance processing centers. Again, they are screened are they are screened there again, making sure there is no issues. And then they move to the sites where we conduct initial military training. They are screened there again. They go into what we would call a quarantine, even though they are showing no signs, to make sure there are no issues, than en they begin additional military training. And we have reduced the numbers. We are running about 50 . We just ran a test of that. We identified six recruits that had some type of possible symptoms, and have taken appropriate measures to make sure they are being taken care of for their health and welfare. And the general public . With help from hhs, we all re calculating the curves, when they go exponential in cities. We are asking the federal government to help prioritize our efforts with fema to send this to the right place. This has to be weeks, cant be months. It is going to be the good enough solution to do this. It is going to be worked on concurrently, but we think we can do this in three or four weeks and go as fast as we can. Here is the big thing, we want to have a standard contract. We are designing the contracts, we are talking to industry. President trump said yesterday, when things get going tough in america, everybody rallies. This is when our Engineering Contractors step up, Hotel Industry steps up, and here is the Critical Power in this idea. We want to give our products to states, and if states want to do this and contract by themselves, we are giving you something that is an hhsvalidated concept and you dont have to wait on the corps of engineers. You could do this independently, even to the point of going back to secure that money from fema. So we need everybody going full bore to figure out where that bed space capacity is, and how can everybody pull together to make this happen. Phil go first, and then jennifer. On the recruiting stations, what impact is closing recruiting stations going to have . Is it going to drive down recruiting . Do you have a sense of what impact that will that have on you . And on the issue of separating folks who may or may not have the coronavirus at these military facilities, there arent negative pressure rooms, right . So what are you doing in those situations to make sure people who may or may n