By Meghann Myers | Military Times
The Defense Department has set a goal to be testing 60,000 service members a day for coronavirus by June, but they won’t get there all at once. The plan is to start testing the most at-risk and most essential troops first, then work their way toward the rest of the force as testing capacity increases.
Of highest priority are active and Reserve health care workers at field hospitals and other alternative care centers, followed closely by high-end counter-terror units and members of the nuclear triad, including bomber crews, submariners and ballistic missile units.
“It’s important to note that testing by itself … does not enable us at this time to improve our readiness and availability,” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday. “Testing alone does not do that.”
But as part of a protocol that includes screening for symptoms, tracking potential exposure and 14-day quarantine periods, it could be the key to deploying units and bringing in new recruits safely.
The ability to test 60,000 troops a day, which would cover all active duty troops in a few weeks, won’t happen all at once.
Instead, Hyten said, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has signed off on a four-tier scheme: tier one would include critical national capabilities, like nuclear forces; tier two includes deployed forces, tier three includes forward-deployed or redeploying forces; and tier four is the remainder of the force.
Tier one, along with all new basic trainees, will complete testing this month, Hyten said, adding, “and I think we’ll rapidly get into tier two and tier three.”
In simpler terms, special operations counter-terror units and nuclear triad units get first priority, followed by those deployed in support of operations outside the U.S., following by troops stationed abroad, including Europe or the Indo-Pacific ― as well as troops heading home from deployments ― and then everyone else who is currently stateside.
DoD is working with the White House, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Health and Human Services Department and industry to get enough testing kits and test analysis equipment, Hyten said, to take care of the supply problem.
Then the issue will be getting those supplies out to all of the remote locations where troops are deployed, but that will be the easier part.
“Because when it becomes a logistics problem, that’s something we’re really good at,” he said.
There will eventually be enough testing supplies, he added, but the challenge will be prioritizing where they go.
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