 I'll give you a little framework of what we just discussed this morning. We've clearly talked about all activities that the U.S. Army are taking in support of the Command and Chief's guidance for the fighting against the COVID-19. So this morning, General McConville and SNA and I sat down with MRDC leadership and went through the three lines of operation and prevention, detection and treatment that the Medical Research and Development Command is organized against this extraordinary challenge. And so we talked a little bit about the infusion of funding that's come from the second and then supplemental that was just passed the other night, but also the request for just shy of $900 million to finance those activities across those three lines of effort, how the team has postured itself to expand its capacity to attack those lines of effort. There's about five tracks of vaccine efforts with a couple dozen candidates that are being worked between the private sector and the government, and they talked us through how they're looking at these various candidates and ultimately we'll select the best horse to back and get through the process. As well as on the prevention side, we looked at the diagnostic kit capacity and how they're working with industry to increase capacity of testing from both a mobile site to as well as some much more larger scale national-like capabilities, and as well as on the treatment front. They actually walked us through how a soldier in Korea, who was one of the first soldiers infected by this terrible virus and how he has treatment, has been going. Very fortunately for us an officer who is stationed here is one of his attending physicians forward, so they have great relationships and passing of the information to tell you it's extraordinary pressure that is under that soldier's family and he's donating his blood and he's doing everything he can to be supported in this process, and God bless him and his family as he gets through this fight. But we got to spend a few hours with some extraordinary Americans who were at the forefront of this fight and we're getting them all the resources that they can trying to get them as much time and energy as they can so they've knocked down any roadblocks that are in their path of moving samples, getting through bureaucratic hurdles, so putting the entire weight of the Army behind this effort. I'd like the Chief to make a couple of comments and then we can open up for questions. The heroes in this fight are going to be some of the people we saw today. The scientists that are working to find the vaccinations, the scientists that are working to find the drugs for treatment, the scientists that are aggressively increasing the capacity of the testing capability, and in all those medical professionals, those doctors, those nurses that are throughout the country that are really going to defeat this virus. But we are here to assist them and we are very proud of what they are doing. I'd like to ask you if you see that understanding of each other for a comment, that decision, and if so, at what point does the suspension of troop movement affect readiness and do you potentially see a shortage of resources that come with this attitude? Yeah, I think what we're seeing is commanders are doing risk assessments in each of their theaters. They're making sure that they have the appropriate force available to conduct the mission. That's what General Miller is doing. He's assessing the situation over the next 30 days and he'll basically do an assessment of risks to the mission which he's trying to accomplish and risks to the force and we'll work that very closely with him. Does it affect the readiness overall? Would it extend the amount of time? I think what you're going to see is over the next 30 to 60 days we're watching this very, very closely and providing the resources for screening and testing so we get an assessment of what the risk to the force is and then from that we can determine what the risk to the mission is. We don't know yet exactly how that's going to play out but we do have the procedures and measures in place to conduct the missions and at the same time protect the force. Are you update on the risk of that money? Over the last, I guess it was eight or nine months there was work that had been going on back and forth between the MRDC and the Office of Secretary of Defense. The business model for this organization is a reimbursable model and eight other government agencies would then come here and apply, put work orders in and they would conduct the research. What you're reflecting is the funding associated with that. There was some back and forth just about the operating model and some of the other things would work and it would refer to General Telly or any other specifics that made this but that was a part and parcel of just how it operates. The MRDC has been moving towards a rate board so that they could much more clearly articulate the costs of how the work is done and that going forward will operate under that different model. With respect to resources though over the last 30 days General Telly correct me if I'm wrong millions and millions of dollars there's a $900 million request that's in the third supplemental so there's a infusion of financial resources that are coming to MRDC. Do you want to tell anything more? Absolutely and with respect to the COVID efforts we have to think of that completely separate and different from our funding streams and the Secretary of the Army, Chief of Staff of the Army very good at just securing the dollars that are going to come in for that specific research and with respect to RID U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases if you think of a two-fold mission which one is for research the basic research that goes after the diseases, the non-battle injuries if you will that affect our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines and then there's a response mission like what we're facing right now with COVID if you go back to the Ebola crisis even Zika this laboratory has played an important role in the discoveries towards prevention, treatment and detection so completely different funding stream we're working well right now with OSD for that the temporary funding with hold again getting the financial apparatus to where we can manage effectively but with respect to COVID-19 no disruptions whatsoever and we're expecting that we've actually received additional funding for that effort thanks for the question Are there additional resources that can be put towards this fight? Is the Army doing more? It looks at a variety of different capabilities that can be brought forward whether it's medical support it's also the research like we were talking about here we're learning every day around the country and we're learning in Korea in Italy and one thing I was remiss to say in my opening remarks it's just the extraordinary performance of General Abelings in Korea General Roger Cooley in Italy how they've been able to protect the force forward in some very tough environments and we learned a lot from the tactics techniques and procedures how they prevented the outbreak and be able to protect the force in this difficult climate what I don't know if you're referring to doing more for around the country we have combat support hospitals on the prepared and employer orders the U.S. Navy is deploying their ships the Comfort and Mercy which are hospital ships we have additional capabilities that we're looking at but a lot of it comes down to working with the state levels and knowing what their needs are and what their resources give them in this forward how is it going to impact your recruiting goals for this year what adjustments are you making or will you be making when it comes to the throughput of recruits into their units or even into basic training itself you know I would say initially the chief should comment as well but we were in very good shape with this recruiting cycle actually ahead of goal so we have some margin at this point but we're learning every day is this a flu virus that is seasonal we'll boomerang back in this next cycle every day we know more so when you hear the leaders like Dr. Fauci Dr. Redfield talking about testing we're getting more data every day we're getting smarter on this problem every day the measures that we've taken it's a lot of it as respects there are areas of the country that are being affected more than others watching us stay in New York and if you look at young men and women that feel like they need to stay home and be with their families we're looking at options like delayed bonuses and others so that we can keep them in the queue try to weather through this very difficult period and then ship later so I think Major General Frank Booth at Army Recruiting Command is doing a remarkable job he's 45-year, 50-year pulse to this effort we're looking at measures of how do you move troops through the MEMPS process and ultimately to a recruiting location but we got to be as safe as we can we have got to be able to protect the force the world is complex and dangerous on any given day now you add these additional conditions we're literally managing this on a case-by-case basis and the department and we're making very appropriate risk-based decisions parents are sending us their sons and daughters and we have an obligation to take care of them many of the young men and women we're expecting to go to work so they may have quit their jobs to go ahead and serve so we're very cognizant of that as the Secretary said if the situation does not allow them to ship then we're looking at ways we can possibly compensate them so they're not unemployed we're making commitments to us but the second thing is we're putting in place is measures all along the way to protect these young men and women so when they go to a recruiter before they leave the recruiter they'll be screened when they go to the military entrance processing station which we like to call MEMPS I remember what that meant because I thought you might ask me but that's where they go we're doing the same type of screening there and then when they go to training sites where it's Fort Jackson Fort Bend and Fort Leonard Fort Smith we want to again bring them in test them and then have the capability if someone shows some of the symptoms we have the ability there to go ahead and quarantine them and make sure they have the necessary medical capability so their safety is secure all the way through the process and what we're really trying to do with our bases in a lot of ways General Abenstein is the closer you can make it to a bubble a safety bubble where everyone is screened and we're not in a position to be affected by the coronavirus the better off we'll be but we are piloting that this week we've kind of reduced the amount of recruits that we would normally send to see how that plays out we're going to adapt the process and come back with some recommendations so you're not recommending it so at this time you're not recommending accepting recruits into the basic form we're shipping right now we are what we're doing is we're putting procedures to allow us to continue to ship and that's going to be based on the rest of soldiers will continue to ship to basic frame but literally getting down case by case you were on this VTC with us yesterday you would have seen these General Frank Muth was drilling down into zip codes of just where these young men and women are coming from making risk-based decisions communicating with them based off of challenges they may face in their neighborhoods and we're going to manage that accordingly and see if you can put in a delay bonus or something of that nature to keep them in the queue but you should try to weather if it's a very, very difficult period Nancy, do you have a phone? Can you tell us what units there's two combat support hospitals that are prepared to deploy orders that's a very short string bags pack getting ready to go now each one of those hospital escarpments from our own chief is 264 beds in each of those two hospitals and then they have ICU capability we're waiting for we'll get you the man but that's two of these hospitals two field hospitals we have more capabilities but obviously we have 191,000 troops deployed right now so we have the baseline of capabilities and we're working with the office of secretary of defense on the capabilities being forward but one thing we really need to think about is the National Guard is on the front edge of this Guard units supporting in their states what I think they're referring to the quote you're referring to was General Friedrich from the Joint Staff he was talking about some active duty capabilities that we could bring very quickly to the most affected states at this point in Washington state New York in particular but they're on the short string to support that initially but I think it's very important in your reporting to look and see just how much the National Guard is doing at this juncture Chief? I do want to talk about the National Guard one of the decisions that you heard we made the 81st Striker Brigade Combat Team not deploying to the Combat Training Center and that's a fairly significant event because those soldiers are coming from Washington and California so one of the ways we support the community is saying hey we're not going to take those Guardsmen and put them in a training environment because we're anticipating that they when we talk to the states they need to be used locally to help with logistics to help with medical and so those are some of the types of things we're doing many of you know we look at the Secretary talked about we have different types of hospitals we have what we call a combat support hospital that has 248 beds we're in the process of transitioning to field hospitals that have 32 beds but they can be augmented so we have different capabilities that we're putting on the active force we're saying okay who's ready to go who's not ready to go, get ready to go but the other thing is we're doing risk mitigation because these doctors these doctors these nurses, these medical professionals they also work in our medical treatment facilities and on our reserve side many of these medical professionals they're actually working in the community so if we take them and call them up in the reserves we may be taking them out of the very communities that we're trying to help so that's what we're we're going down to the person is this person you know engaged in providing medical support in an area that they really need them we call them up but we've got to hurt the community but we're getting down to that level and as well as what the Chief mentioned is changing the configuration of these hospitals from just pure trauma to working infectious diseases they're in the process of that and we're ready to show it and that's the point which I really want to reinforce the Secretary made these hospitals are really designed for combat type operations gunshot wounds blasts and those type of things they're not really designed for infectious diseases but what the military can do is maybe take the load off and allow the civilian hospitals to focus on these issues the other thing we're doing is our Corps of Engineers is working very closely with at least four governors we know right now are head of the engineers Todd Subnight met with the New York government and people talk about can we build hospitals well we think the fastest way is to take a look at hotels and dormitories dormitories that are available and then re-scope them maybe put in the power they need to do that very quickly some of you have been talking about putting under pressure into the capability so if there's any type of disease it stays in it doesn't go out but we can quickly build capacity in this way we did this during World War II the Greenbrier was an army hospital during World War II so this is not something that what we're doing is we're working with the governments one of the things is giving them options we have the capability we say build army engineers what they're doing is contract they have the capability to bring in the expertise they're not putting army engineers and build that those government's options we can build but it may take you this long to build we can re-scope these dormitories and hotels or we can come up with some other options in a lot of these situations like large open tents aren't really the best place to put people with infectious diseases altogether so we're working through some options and giving them some options that they can work with we've had to gradually come back to the shutdown the CDC has revisited Yosemite two times each time allowing more of the laboratory science to be allowed under the regulatory requirements of the CDC it's come back much faster than anticipated COVID-19 is not considered a bioselect agent so it's not under the same restrictions in fact when it was known that Yosemite would be involved a first phone call went to the CDC they assured me no we absolutely need Yosemite's help on this like they had with other responses this is not a it doesn't fall under the same category the same restrictions do not apply but with respect to the other types of work they were released or actually allowed to conduct a second wave if you will a second wave which brings us up to about the BSL 3 type of capability and that's continuing to be a gradual process back to full operation capability if you will but again with the COVID-19 efforts we're allowed to go full speed if you will with full operational capabilities overseas we've heard the case about what's going on at Fort Bliss some other bases when they're being quarantined obviously we have these social distancing measures in place but it doesn't sound like they were being implemented first of all we have the greatest soldiers in the world and they're very disciplined but we absolutely have to learn just like the rest of the society has to learn we're going to have to change our habits and what we've done in the past doesn't work for what we're going to do for this particular case so I think the expectations were a little different when they redeployed in the past and what they're doing now they're doing great the senior mission commander is going to address the issues that we had but this is something we all have to learn how to live with this is how we have to learn we've got to be socially distant from each other we're just not used to that and every time we get this we're going to learn and that's what's great about our army we talk we communicate globally in an instant we have the resources that we can talk all the way across the globe and say hey this is what I learned that didn't go so well we're going to improve on that and we're going to improve every day our soldiers are disciplined the leaders are great we have ways to learn on this on how we bring people back and how we interact with each other we're going to get better every day and the soldiers are going to understand we've got to pick not only the soldiers we've got to protect American people so we're going to learn from this and I think we're doing great