Troops' Skill Sets During Pandemic Sharpen the Sword

April 23, 2020 | BY Terri Moon Cronk , DOD News

More than 56,400 Defense Department personnel are on the front lines of the war against the silent enemy known as the COVID-19 virus that's affected the nation, a DOD spokesman said.

Active-duty service members, reservists and National Guardsmen medical personnel and support troops are in place waging the fight against the virus, Army Lt. Col Chris Mitchell said yesterday.

Doctors, nurses, Army medics and Navy corpsmen are treating COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases in support of local-area health-care workers.

U.S. Northern Command is responsible for DOD's active-duty personnel, with more than 14,000 people deployed, including 4,320 medical personnel, in support of response operations. And more than 1,000 medical providers are embedded nationwide within local hospitals, according to Northcom.

Nearly 3,000 Army Reserve soldiers support COVID-19 response via the 14 Army Urban Augmentation Medical Task Forces in these locations:

1 New York City, with six UAMTFs supporting the alternate care facility at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and local hospitals.

2 New Jersey, with three UAMTFs supporting the Edison Exposition Center, Newark University Hospital, the Atlantic City Convention Center alternate care facility and Salem Hospital.

3 Stamford, Conn., with one UAMTF at the Bennett Medical Center treating patients. Additional help is due to arrive this week.

4 Massachusetts, with a UAMTF at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center alternate care facility and another at Tewksbury Hospital that will be fully operational later this week.

5 Pennsylvania, with a UAMTF for the Temple University alternate care facility, and one in East Stroudsburg that has achieved initial operational capability.

6 Detroit, with a UAMTF at the TCF Center alternate care facility.

A Navy Expeditionary Medical Facility detachment is also at work at an alternate care facility in New Orleans' Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and is providing support in Baton Rouge, La.

More than 350 Navy, Air Force and Army Reserve citizen warriors were mobilized in the last week to support the DOD COVID-19 response. Most reservists will deploy to New York City hospitals to assist on the front lines. More than 5,100 reservists are on military orders supporting COVID-19 operations.

The Navy Reserve has more than 1,500 sailors engaged in COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts around the world, including more than 650 reservists at the Javits Convention Center alternate care facility and hospitals in the New York City area, and more than 200 reservists are serving aboard the Navy hospital ships USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort.

The Air Force Reserve mobilized more than 150 medical professionals to New York City, and they were expected to arrive at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, yesterday.

National Guard Troops

Nearly 42,000 National Guardsmen are supporting COVID-19 response at the direction of their governors. State priorities are focused on testing and screening, and providing logistical support through warehousing and distribution of medical supplies and food.

DOD's readiness posture is not degraded, Mitchell said. "Any time service members put their skills to use, it sharpens the sword. They're going to be better prepared to deal with this kind of thing next time around because they're using their skills and testing processes and things like that in a situation where they're under stress."

A New Normal: Service Academies Cope With COVID-19

April 23, 2020 | BY Katie Lange , DOD News

People all over the world are dealing with life changes that have occurred due to the coronavirus pandemic, and that includes students at the nation's storied military academies.

Thousands of students attend the five U.S. service academies — the Military Academy in West Point, New York; the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado; the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, and the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York.

Discipline and routine are essential for those students, but both were upended in mid-March when COVID-19 began to spread across the country.

Most students were on spring break when social distancing rules went into place, so academy leaders extended those breaks until they were able to get distance learning up and running. The Air Force Academy, which was the only school not on spring break at the time, sent its underclassmen home.

There are always some students for whom going home isn't an option, and accommodations have been made for their continued learning. Each school has a yearly sponsorship program in which local families help take care of the students who can't get home to their relatives. Those families have stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well.

"A lot of those sponsor families have still been kind enough to host some of those students," Coast Guard Academy spokesman Cmdr. Dave Milne said.

By late March, students at all five academies were set up with resources to finish their coursework online. Students have adjusted relatively well, officials said, despite having to adapt to challenges such as time zones, missing equipment and the occasional spotty internet connection.

"I live on a rural farm in Ohio, and we have satellite internet," said West Point Cadet Edmund Coleman, who will graduate this year. "As a result, sometimes if the weather's bad, I don't have great access to the online meetings. Most of my teachers have anticipated that and they've recorded lessons and put them online so that I can view them when I do [get the] internet back. As of now, it hasn't really been an issue."

The challenges are forcing many to get creative. One West Point teacher set up a show-and-tell portion of his class to get the students to interact more.

But there have still been some frustrations, especially for graduating seniors who have questions that, so far, remain open-ended. 

"They [seniors] had some capstone projects in the works and a lot of questions, preparing for their next assignments and permanent change of station moves," Milne said. "But they understand and … they've been really open and grateful and flexible."

All service academy students have been encouraged to keep up their physical training as well, whether on their own or through school resources. Each academy has created online workouts and exercise sessions for students to access. 

Many spring and summer activities at the schools have been canceled, including sporting events. Even some commissioning ceremonies are still in question.

The Air Force Academy graduated its cadets early, on April 18. The ceremony, which was moved up by more than a month, allowed the Class of 2020 to celebrate together, albeit without any of the annual precommissioning festivities. The graduates — including the first batch of Space Force officers — stood 6 feet apart to maintain social distancing guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Family and friends were not allowed to attend, but they were able to watch online.

West Point announced in late April that its graduation, which was initially scheduled for May 23, would be pushed to June 13, when President Donald J. Trump will serve as the commencement speaker. The school said graduating cadets are expected to return to campus in time for the ceremony, which will involve unspecified changes from previous ceremonies due to current circumstances.

"The size and scope of the graduation ceremony will be determined by safety considerations for cadets and the entire West Point community," the school's Public Affairs Office said in a statement. "Academy leadership is conducting a thorough analysis and plan for the safe return of the Corps of Cadets."

The Naval Academy also canceled its commissioning week traditions, including the popular Herndon Monument climb. Students and their families were told in mid-April that graduation would remain on its original date of May 22, but it will now be virtual. Vice Adm. Sean S. Buck, the Naval Academy superintendent, is encouraging graduates to have private swearing-in ceremonies that they can share with the school.

The Coast Guard Academy announced last week it will hold a virtual graduation on May 20, its original date. Milne said they're still working out the details, including soliciting ideas from first-class cadets.

Officials at the Merchant Marine Academy, which commissions many of its graduates into the armed forces, said they are still considering their options. The academy runs on trimesters, so its graduation ceremonies are usually held in late June.

Despite all the upheaval the pandemic has caused, the schools and their students are doing what many of them train to do — stay prepared and be flexible.

Army Has Long History of Combating Diseases

April 23, 2020 | BY David Vergun , DOD News

Army researchers are working to rapidly develop and test experimental vaccines to combat COVID-19, Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy said.

The Army is also collaborating with the private sector and other government entities on 24 vaccine candidates, some of which are headed for human testing after having been tested on animals, McCarthy told reporters at a recent Pentagon news conference.

If history is any indicator of future success, there is reason to be hopeful. Being at the forefront of medical breakthroughs is nothing new for Army researchers:

Fighting Malaria

Due to their ability to carry and spread diseases such as malaria, mosquitoes are one of the deadliest insects in the world, killing an average of 725,000 people a year, said. Army Col. (Dr.) Deydre Teyhen, commander of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. That surpasses the combined annual number of deaths from combat (475,000), deadly snakebites (50,000), crocodile attacks (1,000) and shark attacks (10).

To reduce deaths caused by mosquitoes, WRAIR has acted on several fronts, she said: providing proactive medical diplomacy, delivering vaccines and vector control, and leading the world in malaria drug and vaccine development.

An antibiotic drug developed by Army researchers several years ago is now available to treat service members who have life-threatening, multidrug-resistant, or MDR, bacterial infections.

Arbekacin is a new antibiotic treatment for MDR infections. Those types of infections may complicate wounds suffered by soldiers in combat, said Army Col. (Dr.) Michael Zapor, an infectious diseases physician at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

"Of all the bacterial species found on the planet, relatively few are intrinsically multidrug-resistant pathogens,"  Zapor said. "In Iraq and Afghanistan, the bacterium known as acinetobacter is one such MDR bacterium that has caused problems in our patient population."

Acinetobacter is commonly found in the water and soil of regions such as Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. Although it's intrinsically resistant to many antibiotics, it's not especially virulent and generally not problematic in humans unless their immune system has been severely compromised or the bacterium is inoculated deep into macerated tissue, as would occur with massive open wounds resulting from battle injuries.

Infections caused by the bacterium were prevalent during the Vietnam War, he said. But at the time, antibiotics were usually successful in eradicating acinetobacter infections. However, over time, resistance emerged and antibiotics became less effective against many pathogenic bacteria, including acinetobacter.

Fighting Yellow Fever

A lot of service members were taken out of the fight in 1898 during the Spanish-American War due to yellow fever.

The Army created the Yellow Fever Commission, led by Army Maj. (Dr.) Walter Reed, which determined that mosquitoes were the carriers of the disease. The commission developed effective control programs to eradicate the mosquitoes.

Fighting Adenovirus

Acute respiratory diseases were fairly common among service members in the early 1950s. Maurice Hilleman, a microbiologist with the Army Medical Center's Department of Respiratory Diseases, discovered that the adenovirus was the culprit.

WRAIR created an adenovirus vaccine in 1956, just three years after its discovery.