The Department of Defense confirmed Thursday that it has received a request from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for military support in distributing COVID-19 vaccines.
The DoD is "evaluating the request, and what kinds of support it can provide," according to a Pentagon statement.
"Given the significance of the request, it will be reviewed urgently but carefully to determine what DoD assets can safely be made available to support the effort," Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said in an emailed statement. "As Secretary Austin has said, DoD is committed to do as much as it possibly can to assist the whole-of-government effort against COVID-19.”
Beyond providing that the request was "significant," spokespersons from the Pentagon's COVID-19 effort were adamant they could provide no further details regarding troop numbers or timelines at this time, despite media reports of FEMA requesting up to thousands of troops.
"These types of requests, we are putting them through the same level of analysis that we would for any other type of allocation of soldiers," Max Rose, senior COVID-19 advisor to the secretary of defense told reporters on Thursday. "It is something we are taking extraordinarily seriously. In our effort to keep all options on the table, we're not rejecting it outright by any sense of the word."
"It is being analyzed for resources and risks by the services," Kirby reiterated. "But the secretary has made it very clear that we are going to source the request ... in as aggressive a manner as we can."
Again, Kirby said the numbers have yet to be determined and the force will likely be made up of a mixture of active-duty, National Guard, and Reserves troops. Kirby also added that the timeline is a matter of days, not weeks.
Rose also emphasized that Austin has made defeating the pandemic a main priority since he took office.
Tens of thousands of National Guard troops across the country are already assisting in COVID-19 response operations -- on top of the significant number recently activated in Washington, D.C. for President Joe Biden's inauguration and those already activated both domestically and in foreign capacities around the world. Additionally, about 1,000 active-duty medical personnel are on ready-to-deploy status for COVID-19 operations.
Within the DoD, as of Wednesday, 214,424 total COVID-19 cases had been reported including 137,709 among service members. The increase in cases from day-to-day has been consistent over the last several months, Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Friedrichs, Joint Staff surgeon said during a Pentagon briefing Thursday.
The military infection rate remains slightly lower than the general population -- 8.8% and 9.2% respectively -- as it has throughout the duration of the pandemic. Friedrichs also said the increase in cases appears to have "leveled off across the United States" and the same trend is appearing in the military population.
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