[inaudible] i hear you. Punctuality. Man. We have everybody . Do we have folks on the phone again . Yes, sir. Ok, i will just let you know ,ho is here, Ryan Mccarthy chief of staff of the army, surgeon general, director of operations and plans, director of the Army National guard bureau and Sergeant Major of the army. The chief will make some opening remarks, and then we will open up to your questions. I think we have a hard stop at 1400, right . Ok. Thank you, mr. Secretary. The army has 288 confirmed cases of covid19 as of this morning. 100 of soldiers. 64 department of the army civilians. 5 are dependents nine are cadets. 50 are army contractors. This week, the secretary of defense signed orders for three Army Hospitals to deploy to new york and Washington State. Fortive 31st hospital for campbell, kentucky, and the night hospital for fort hood, texas, will deploy to new york city. An advanced party is on the ground as i speak. The main party will arrive at joint base mcguire, dix, lakehurst tomorrow. They will set up at the Javits Center this weekend and they will be operational for noncovered patients beginning monday. The 627 hospital from fort carson, colorado, will deploy to seattle. An advanced party arrived yesterday evening. They are coordinating with state and local authorities and conducting a site survey in a state fair ground and a location decision is pending. Our army corps of engineers is engaged in all 50 states, puerto rico, and the virgin islands, assisting fema and state authorities. They are on the ground conducting site assessments for alternate care facilities. The Lieutenant General will provide a Detailed Press briefing when the corps of engineers on the corps of engineers efforts tomorrow. Over 10,000 National Guard soldiers are supporting covid19 response efforts in communities in every state across the nation. Their missions include delivering food to communities, supporting local Emergency Management agencies, providing personnel protective equipment to First Responders and hospital support toproviding testing facilities, providing transportation to healthcare workers, cleaning and disinfecting public spaces and Staffing Call Centers for the public. Siemensnt general tom reached out to general officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers who have the skill to x the skill or expertise to assist with our covid19 efforts. This is a voluntary opportunity for medical soldiers for life to return to the fight if they so choose, especially if they are not currently assisting their local communities. So far, initial responses have been very, very positive. Also yesterday, the army directed all installations to assume Health Protection condition level charlie including all previous guidance on personal hygiene, social distancing, disinfecting common areas and having 14 days of supplies on hand. It also gives commanders more authority to restrict access and limit access to Mission Essential personnel. Our Immediate Response forces have assumed level delta to remain ready to respond to threats, just like we saw with the 82nd Airborne Division in january. We are meeting content by protecting the force and supporting the National Response effort. We are standing up to prevent covid19. This is a tough fight, but together we will do our part to help the nation win. Lets go to hope from nila terry. Com. Hi, general. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask about this voluntary callout. , are you looking for a specific number of retirees to come back . And what is the number of responses you have gotten so far . And what is the process if somebody is approved to return . First of all, g1 is working. I will get you the exact numbers, but we have had some positive responses. What we are looking for is medical expertise. Do you have anything you want to add on that . In addition, what we will do is even though weve gotten many volunteers, we walked through the process of certification, making sure that certifications and credentials are straight and once we do that, we will plug them into all of our medical Treatment Facilities as required to support the mission. Yes, im here. Just a couple of questions if i could. On the volunteer effort, can you give us even ballpark number of responders so far, and can you the about how much staffing Field Hospitals may strain the active duty and how many more hospitals can you actually or do you actually think you will be able to get sent out to the country at this point . And then i have a followup. Number of aal hospital center, which is the headquarters, as well as the sealed hospital itself and all of the supporting detachments is roughly around 300 30 soldiers. Those soldiers that are assigned to medical Treatment Facilities will be called military medically assigned personnel. Their primary mission is to support the force. When they are called upon to deploy, in this case here, to support the government or our nation, we look at cross leveling within the medical command and then the volunteers that you are talking about is where we also will leverage in addition to the army reserve to fill those holes from the medical Treatment Facility so that we can maintain the readiness of our soldiers as well as to the beneficiary population. We will followup on the exact numbers. There has been positive response. We will get you the exact numbers. Do you have a followup . Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the movementimpact has had on training and where you stand on training right now . I will talk a little about abou committee in this case, the Senate Armed Services committee will come back with a series of questions so the transaction will be conducted in the digital space. Ok, so it was not really a hearing . No, not in the traditional sense. It was more a paper hearing. Yeah. General, you said 100 soldiers who had tested positive for the virus. Can you say where they are . Are they clustered in particular bases . . A dont want to get to the exact numbers of where they are at, but they are pretty much spread out. We have not seen clusters yet. I dont have that broken down. Also, the effort in new york, how many beds will you provide with that Field Hospital . How many personnel as well . As far as the beds that are going to new york, they are coming with 284. I think what we will see happening is and this is a good interagency kind of coordination. They are going into a fixed building, which means we wont be setting up tents. Fema has the capability to put in place, which they have, hospitals, beds, and equipment, and they are doing that right now as they speak. We are still bringing equipment there because we want to make what youave it, but are going to see is a good old government effort where the state is contributing, fema is contributing a lot of the equipment and instructor inside the site, and then we will be providing personnel to actually and dohat hospital noncovid19type care and that may give us actually more beds. And staff . How many staff roughly . About 330. And the beds you said were roughly 284 . 284 that one. The other one has 248. Thent want to get into nittygritty as far as transition between hospitals, but basically, that hospital has 284 beds and the one going up to seattle will have 248 beds, but again, there will be heads set up there and how we staff the beds, we will probably see a lot more than that. What is important for the context is they can bring that capability and stand it up, but followingefs point, nonexistent infrastructure increases your ratio of people you can take care of. Also speed. We got an order tuesday, on the road wednesday, doing the coordination and this weekend they will be putting people in there and monday we expect to be taking care of patients. You have a meeting on monday or earlier this week in conclusion was the army was not mitigating fast enough for the rise of covid cases and that you were short of money . There was a report put out that looks like an official document from that meeting. I just wanted to confirm with you that that in fact took place and that that was an accurate report. Im not familiar with the reporting. I would probably need more context. We are constantly making assessments of the resources that we need to sustain this effort. You will see in the supplemental bill we have a request to increase our efforts on prevention detection and treatment to sustain this over the longterm, but im not familiar with that report. General abrams was probably the first to have to deal with covid out in south korea. When did he put out the call to Army Headquarters, if you will, and when were you aware of what was going to be needed for various bases, and did you take decisions to lockdown other formations . I will say a couple things, and maybe if we could get general flynn up here, the army Crisis Action team i think january 26, right, charlie . Both the chief and i traveled to south korea in february and that is when we started to learn more about this. I think it is really important hasppreciate over time it taken a lot to learn about this issue because so Little Information came out of china on the front end of this process. , his tactics, techniques, and procedures that he and his command have developed have made a tremendous difference for the department along with some incredibly strong leadership from that team. I think charlie, do you want to fill in some of those links . But that is the rough timeline. Jennifer, i would say the secretary mentioned, i think what is important was obviously in asia andd china and general abrams, we were watching what was going on so when those indications happened because we have, you know, a lot of Army Soldiers and families in south korea and our eighth Army Headquarters is over there, that came to us in the g3 , and we were doing in asia. We said, ok, which exercises to do we want to reduce the scope of to give us the capability to limit exposure, and we did that. Traveling in that part of the world in february was incredibly interesting. I went the week before with the chief to thailand, the philippines, how little they knew. He started putting some of these data points together and trying to string it together over the course of february. It has been a very complex issue that has taken time to get the data points together. We are going to go on the line again. Yes, thank you. I actually dont have a question. It was answered earlier. Thank you. Great. Two questions. One is just the numbers. Youve been talking about beds and personnel for these Field Hospitals. Least, that initially at its just going to be the personnel on the facilities. Eing built how many medical personnel is the army sending to new york city and how many medical personnel is the army sending to seattle . And i got a second question. Personnel going to new york is roughly 650 ,eople, and a similar number maybe a little bit less, to seattle, but 600plus. I think it is important to point out what the general was discussing earlier, that those personnel are assigned to those hospitals, and they are going to go into this, and the whole government approach is that they are going to put a couple thousand beds in there, but what they are really doing is taking pressure off the local and state Health Care System and moving patients into that facility so patientsan help those because they are still going to have peopled broken legs and Car Accidents and Everything Else that will need care. Therefore, it takes a lot of pressure off the local and state Health Care System to do that. The idea here with the corps of engineers, with fema, and with is state and local officials to work in collaboration so we can provide skilled medical professionals to take some pressure off the local and state Health Care System with our army professionals. My second question is this issue of putting troops up on the canadian border. Bests been answered by northcom. We dont have any direct impact on that yet. Ok, thank you. We are going to go to ashley folkie. Yes, hi, thank you. I had a question and then a followup. With the notice that went out last night at the stop movement order. What impact will that have on soldiers who are already deployed to europe 2020 . For the soldiers that deployed, it is a 60day stop movement order. Some of those soldiers that would have been coming back, they are not going to come back. Their tours will be extended, and the soldiers who were getting ready to go, they are staying here and limiting their exposure. Commanders in each of the areas, exception to policy authority if they have to have someone get back or they need someone to get over there, we will work the details on that. Ok, great, thanks. I also wanted to ask on the Defense Industry base, last week, you guys mentioned you were in talks and some of the states had differing issues. After a week, is there any other clarity on the situation on possible slowdowns and delays, and have you discussed potential penalties with companies for not being able to deliver on time . You are referencing existing weapons systems. You are not asking about defense production act authorities in response to the crisis, just to clarify . No, no, sir. And general murray have done an assessment of the Defense Industrial base. We have many contractors that are still reporting to work and vending metal and continuing to progress. We are working with states because it really is a statebystate related issue. If there is a manufacturer in florida that has a footprint or has parts of their Manufacturing Division in new york or connecticut and others, you have to work through some of these issues about their employees traveling from state to state. What we can do is we can make dr. Jenny and general murray available and kind of walk you through this very complex issue, but we have been pretty blessed of how these manufacturers are stepping up and continuing to put measures in place so their employees can continue to work modernizationthat path. Thank you very much. That would be great. We will do one more. Thank you. Just wondering about we heard a few of the training exercises have been canceled. What immediate effects to readiness are you seeing and what do you expect over the next few months . I think what we are going to see is its only been a couple of days, so to speak, on some of the training exercises. E will do an assessment ideally we want to get people back to doing the missions that they need to do. They are still able to train at the lower levels, exercising the proper procedures to limit exposure, but we certainly will be doing assessments as we move forward over the next couple of weeks. Can you tell us how many soldiers total have been tested and how youre getting test kits out to deployed soldiers in afghanistan . Second, can you talk about for the Immediate Response forces what the impact means . We have roughly conducted almost about 5000 test. In support of the commanders in the field downrange in combat areas, we are leaning forward to deliver that capability in a matter of days to support their missions forward. How are you getting those tests to them . For example, in afghanistan, there has been reports that soldiers are not able to get test and there are some concerns there might be a number of cases out there. Those tests are shipped to that location. Normally, we have a 24hour turnaround time on those tests. We have forces that are ready to go, just like you saw in january when the 82nd went on. When we say delta, what we mean is we want them to limit exposure. We want them doing pretty much only the essential tasks that they need to conduct. That means they are pretty much home or doing what they need to do at work. They are not out being exposed to other people. They can work out. They can take care of themselves, but again, we want them to limit their exposure to anyone else and almost create a safety bubble around themselves. That is what the technique that general abrams use. You create safety bubbles and make sure that all the people inside the bubble do not have the virus, and you keep that separation so you can protect the force. That is what we are trying to do with them. They are ready to go, and we dont want one person to expose others and that to reduce our readiness. Soldiers,t campbell how many, and if i missed the specific unit. Second, of the 5000 tests you have run, was it because there were symptoms or was it precautionary for particular unit . How did you choose first who got tested . The first, you take one. Scotty, you take the second. The hospital in Fort Campbell is roughly 350 people. Again in new york, that is two hospitals that are going up, so it will be 650, 700. We are following cdc guidance , symptoms, and medical professionals, again, when he ascertains, looks at those symptoms can see maybe i have to do a test and that is what occurred. We will go to barbara and then we will go back on the phone line. I wanted to ask about the operational side. I dont think i understand some of the previous answers. That 13, 14 case actually says current mitigation efforts have been insufficient . Know whatd like to led the army to the conclusion that current mitigation is insufficient. A reallyse lines, clear explanation for several days, the army other services, but we are talking army has said you trust local of whenrs to take care there should be large groups, not having large groups, but you continue to get these reports of large groups, of formations, of significant numbers of people, so with this now increased effort, is there anything that you have mandated not no