The military is reassessing the decision to use hospital ships docked in New York City and Los Angeles for non-COVID-19 patients after both have admitted a small amount of patients, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.
"The intent originally was for them to take the overflow of trauma patients out of the local hospital so the local hospitals could focus on the COVID patients," Milley told Fox News' Harris Faulkner. "The secretary of defense is making a risk assessment to determine whether or not we should take on all the COVID patients to relieve some of the local hospitals."
The ships, the Mercy and the Comfort, each have 1,000 beds and multiple capabilities, said Milley, and are part of the military's large response to the coronavirus emergency.
"We've got four field hospitals deployed in U.S. cities, in Seattle, Dallas, New Orleans, as well," said Milley. "We have other capabilities, the Navy has two expeditionary medical facilities. We stood up additional field hospitals of the Army last night. We got about 450 doctors and well over 1,000 nurses committed nationwide out of the U.S. military, in support of various civilian communities."
The military is also providing supplies, he said.
"We've already provided 5 million masks [and] we have 5 million more masks en route," Milley said. "We set aside 2,000 ventilators and we've got national guardsmen contributing to the fight. We will continue to pile on until we've expended all of our resources to protect the American people."
Meanwhile, FEMA is the focal point for all local requests and demands, said Milley, and it determines which government agency can best satisfy the need.
"We deploy the assets necessary to help out," said Milley.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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