CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
4A ❚ MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2020❚ USA TODAY NEWS
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said
Sunday that the Pentagon will deploy
more than 1,100 doctors, nurses and oth-
er medical professionals to New York
City to help combat the coronavirus
pandemic that has killed more than
9,000 Americans.
More than 2,250 of those deaths oc-
curred in New York City where the Army
Corps of Engineers converted the Jacob
K. Javits Convention Center into what
Esper told CNN will be the “largest hos-
pital in the United States.”
Esper said most of the health care
personnel deployed to New York City
will serve in the converted center, which
will have a 2,500-bed capacity. He said
the Pentagon decided late Saturday to
“deploy a few hundred of them to 11 New
York City hospitals that are also seeing a
deficiency when it comes to medical
staff.”
The Navy hospital ship USNS Com-
fort is docked in New York to assist with
the crisis but is treating only a few doz-
en patients. Esper explained that the
ship was being used to treat only trauma
patients to ease the burden on the city’s
hospitals and keep non-COVID-19 pa-
tients from becoming infected. There
are fewer trauma cases than usual amid
the outbreak because more people are
staying home.
Esper said he gave the authority to
treat coronavirus patients on the float-
ing 1,000-bed hospital to the head of
Northern Command, Air Force Gen. Ter-
rence O’Shaughnessy, “to make that call
when he needs to make that call.”
He said that including the Javits Cen-
ter, the military has established eight
field hospitals across the USA to help
deal with the outbreak. An additional 22
will “come online in the next two
weeks,” Esper said.
Many on Capitol Hill have criticized
the Pentagon chief for not doing enough
and not acting quickly enough to ad-
dress the crisis.
“There is a lack of leadership right
now that is coming out of the Pentagon,”
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.,told Politi-
co. Gallego, a former Marine who served
in Iraq and sits on the House Armed Ser-
vices Committee, said Esper was too fo-
cused on keeping the military ready to
face other threats rather than how he
could protect service members and use
military resources to fight the outbreak.
“If you try to treat it as a readiness
problem, you are never going to get ontop of this. You need to treat it as a pub-
lic health problem,” Gallego said.
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former
Army Ranger who sits on the House
Armed Services Committee, told The
Hill, “I think the Pentagon didn’t take
this seriously as fast as they should
have.” He cited a committee hearing Feb.
26 when Esper said the Pentagon had
not considered whether additional re-
sources were needed to deal with the vi-
rus.
“The fact that the Pentagon was not
yet having those discussions tells me
that they were getting at this problem
too late. So here we are now in a crisis,”
Crow said.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, a
member of the House Armed Services
Committee, said, “The whole society, in-
cluding the military, has been playingcatch-up on COVID-19 because we have
never seen anything like this before.”
But he cautioned about “being too criti-
cal under the circumstances.”
Esper disputed those characteriza-
tions of the Pentagon’s response to the
pandemic.
“The Department of Defense has
been all in now since the beginning of
this, going back two-plus months to
January. We have been all in and ahead
of the curve when it comes to respon-
ding to the coronavirus,” Esper said on
CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Last week, acting Navy Secretary
Thomas Modly relieved Capt. Brett Cro-
zier of his command of the USS Theo-
dore Roosevelt after Crozier distributed
a letter, which was obtained by the news
media, pleading for help amid an out-
break on the aircraft carrier.
Saturday, President Donald Trump
defended Modly’s decision, saying Cro-
zier’s letter was “not appropriate.”
Esper said Sunday that he supported
Crozier’s removal because Modly “had
lost faith and confidence in the captain,
based on his actions.” He said there is an
investigation into the matter.
“Modly made a very tough decision, a
decision that I support,” Esper said. “It’s
just another example how we hold lead-
ers accountable for their actions.”
Esper disputed the idea that the Navy
had not taken the outbreak on the air-
craft carrier seriously enough, saying
“the entire military chain of command”
was involved “in terms of providing
support to this crew.”
He said the crew was doing well.
“I’m pleased to report, right now, over
half of the ship has been tested. Only 155
sailors have come up positive. Those are
all mild and moderate. There have been
no hospitalizations whatsoever,” he
said. “So the crew is being taken care of
out there.”DoD chief sends staff to NYC center
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the military has set up eight field hospitals
with 22 to come in the next two weeks. JIM WATSON/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGESEsper deploys 1,100 to
‘largest US hospital’
William Cummings
USA TODAY
New York will reach a peak of 855
deaths a day on Friday. By comparison,
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reported
Sunday there had been 594 coronavi-
rus-related deaths in his state in the
past 24 hours.
To help address New York’s crisis,
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he
was sending more than 1,100 military
medical personnel to New York City,
where the Jacob K. Javits Convention
Center was converted into a field hospi-
tal with a 2,500-bed capacity. Esper
said it will be the “largest hospital in the
United States.” Eight other field hospi-
tals have opened across the USA, and 22
more are scheduled to open in the com-
ing weeks, Esper said.
The Murray model predicts Michigan
will hit a peak of 173 deaths a day on Sat-
urday, and Louisiana will hit a peak of
76 deaths a day on Friday.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told
CNN on Sunday that he expects his state
will run out of ventilators and hospital
beds on or before that date.
“It’s growing exponentially,” Michi-
gan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told Fox
News on Sunday. “This is something
that is aggressively growing in all age
groups all across our most populous
part of the state, which is southeast
Michigan.”
She said hospitals in her state were at
capacity.
The next problem areas?
Birx said Pennsylvania, Colorado and
the District of Columbia are potential
hot spots where “they are starting to go
on that upside” of the coronavirus
mortality curve.
According to the Murray model,
Colorado and Pennsylvania could each
lose more than 2,000 people to the
coronavirus.
The projection says the national peak
will occur April 16, when the daily death
toll will reach more than 2,600, about
double the more than 1,300 deaths re-
ported Saturday. That reflects an expo-
nential increase from the 525 deaths the
previous Saturday, March 28, and 46
deaths on March 21.
Based on the projection, 93,
Americans will die from the virus by
Aug. 4. In a worst-case scenario, the
model shows that as many as 180,
could die by that date. Even the
worst-case figure assumes “full social
distancing through May 2020.” Without
those measures, the count could climb
even higher.
Last week, the director of the Nation-
al Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicted
the final toll could be 100,000 to
200,000.
“It’s going to be a very deadly period,
unfortunately,” President Donald
Trump said Saturday at a White House
news conference.A plea for more stay-home ordersOn Sunday, the surgeon general
stressed that people and the govern-
ment still have the “power to change the
trajectory of this epidemic” and that
there is hope that the worst projections
can be avoided if Americans follow
strict social distancing guidelines.
“I want Americans to understand
that, as hard as this week is going to be,
there is a light at the end of the tunnel if
everyone does their part for the next 30
days,” Adams said.
In an effort to ensure that their citi-
zens practice social distancing, most
governors have issued stay-at-home or-
ders restricting all but essential activ-ities.
Nine Republican governors have re-
sisted such a move despite calls to do so
from leading health officials such as
Fauci, prompting many to call on Trump
to issue a federal order for people to stay
home across the USA.
The surgeon general said the admini-
stration’s guidelines, which call for
strict social distancing until at least
April 30, “are essentially our national
stay-at-home order.”
“It’s important to understand that
most people across the country are
doing the right thing,” Adams said.
“Over 90% of the country is staying at
home. And a good proportion, more
than average, are staying at home even
in those nine states.”
He said those nine states where a
stay-at-home order hasn’t been issued
“actually produce a large amount of our
food” and are balancing the need to
“provide for the rest of the country” with
the need to avoid spreading the virus.
“The governors are intensely protec-
tive of their right, and rightly so, to be
able to decide what’s best for their
states,” he said. “And we’re going to doeverything we can as scientists and as
physicians, as medical professionals, to
help them understand what we think
the right thing is for them to do.”
Adams said governors resisting a
stay-at-home order can help if they are
willing to “give us what you can” in
terms of asking people to stay home.
“Give us a week. Give us whatever
you can to stay at home during this par-
ticularly tough time when we’re going to
be hitting our peak,” he said. “I just want
everyone to know that, from a national
perspective, the surgeon general was
saying no matter where you are, stay at
home. At least give us a week or two, if
you can. We want you to do it for 30
days, but even in those nine states, give
us what you can, so we can get this peak
and start to come down on the other
side.”Some governors are resistingThose governors have given various
explanations for their reluctance to or-
der their residents to stay at home,
ranging from doubts about the effec-
tiveness to concerns about government
overreach.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said Friday
at a news conference that Fauci “maybe
doesn’t have all the information.” She
said her state took a wide range of ac-
tions that effectively amounted to a
stay-at-home order.
“One of the things that I have asked
Iowans since the start is to remain calm
and to be informed. The term ‘shelter in
place’ does not mean that any state’s or-
ders are different from or stronger than
what we are doing in Iowa,” Reynolds
said.
“The people themselves are primarily
responsible for their safety,” South Da-
kota Gov. Kristi Noem said Wednesday,
adding the state constitution prevented
her from taking “draconian measures
much like the Chinese government has
done.”
Noem said Friday that projections
show up to 70% of her state’s residents
could become infected, but a stay-at-
home order would not be worth the dis-
ruptions it would cause to daily life.
Michigan’s Whitmer slammed the
lack of a national approach to the prob-
lem and said it has resulted in a “patch-
work based on whomever the governor
is.” She said that is “creating a more po-
rous situation where COVID-19 will go
longer and more people will get sick
and, sadly, more lives may get lost.”
Contributing: Michael Collins, John
Fritze and David Jackson, USA TODAY;
Trevor J. Mitchell, Sioux Falls (S.D)
Argus Leader; Nick Coltrain, Des Moines
Register; The Associated PressDeadly week
Continued from Page 1A
A body is moved to a refrigerator truck serving as a temporary morgue outside
Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Saturday. The White House
expects coronavirus deaths to increase sharply in New York this week, along
with Detroit and Louisiana. BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES