The Army is sending teams of physicians and other medical staffers to help overworked but understaffed hospitals in the New York area contend with the coronavirus pandemic.
The service is building the Urban Augmentation Medical Task Forces with soldiers normally assigned to Army Reserve units around the country. Pentagon officials said all are volunteers who are not already engaged in the battle against COVID-19 in their own home communities.
“We do not want to take medical personnel out of civilian communities where they were actually fighting the virus,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville told reporters at the Pentagon.
About 85 U.S. Army soldiers are assigned to each task force, which has the capability to provide the same medical service as a 250-bed hospital, Gen. McConville said.
The Army put together 15 of the task forces. Each will include more than a dozen doctors — both infectious disease and respiratory specialists — along with physicians’ assistants, nurses, pharmacists, medics, psychiatrists and psychologists, along with support staff, officials said.
The task forces were first deployed to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey then sent to augment medical staff community hospitals in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Some of them will be used at the Jacob Javits Center, officials said.
“We knew that there was going to be a lot of demand for medical professionals,” Gen. McConville said. “They are motivated and ready to go.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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