Two senior military leaders discuss how military training is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The speakers are: Army Maj. Gen. Lonnie G. Hibbard, commander of the Army Center for Initial Military Training at Fort Eustis, Virginia, and Air Force Maj. Gen. Andrea D. Tullos, commander of Second Air Force at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. The pair briefs reporters via telephone from the Pentagon, July 10, 2020.
Transcript
Happy Friday and good afternoon. I’m Commander Jessica McNulty, and I’ll be facilitating today’s press briefing on an update on training in the COVID-19 environment. Before we begin, I would ask that you please keep your phones and laptops muted unless you are speaking in order to prevent feedback and other distractions. Today, on the phone lines, we have Air Force Major General Andrea Tallest, commander of Second Air Force, who is prepared to discuss the Air Force’s operations for basic military training and non flying technical training in the mist of COVID-19. Also with us is Army Major General Lonnie Hibbert, the commanding general for the U. S. Army Center for initial military Training, who was prepared to discuss COVID-19 mitigation measures in initial entry training and the Army’s adapted training model. Let me start with a quick communication check. General told us. Can you hear me, mam? Loud and clear. Thank you. You ma’am. General Hibbert, can you hear me? Sir? Clear man. Thank you. Thank you, sir. General told us the floor is yours for opening comments. Okay. Thank you. So first I’d like Teoh. Thank the media who are participating today and for reaching out to us. It has been challenging COVID-19 to get accurate and timely information out both to the public as well as to our military forces. So we’re encouraged by the continuous engagement that we’re seeing. And I would offer that Second Air Force is always open to you for your query on, and I appreciate the opportunity to tell you how the air force is continuing to train through the pandemic. Our military readiness absolutely requires that we have trained and available forces to meet our national security objectives. And we made the decision to continue training in a face and effective manner after a significant amount of analysis and guidance from our public health officials, and we continue to review these decisions on a daily basis. The Air Force annually produces 40,000 total Force Chairman at Joint Base, San Antonio and Lackland, and that includes our active duty Reserve and National Guard forces were able to fight through the pandemic and provide quality airman because of a strong culture of safety, strict implementation of the CDC guidelines and mitigation of risk across our training pipeline. Since the 15th of March of this year at Joint Base San Antonio at Lackland, we trained 8700 recruits, and they’ve been tested for COVID-19 upon entry, with 200 of those recruits testing positive. That’s a 2% positive rate over approximately four months of training, and 60% of those positive have been asymptomatic. All of those trainees who tested positive have since returned to training, and none have required hospitalization. Our success of fighting through have been attributed to are consistent, strict screening of all of our trainees, our enforcement of physical distancing and strict hygiene practices At all times, we’re fostering a culture of self identification. We rapidly removed symptomatic personnel from the pipeline, and we conduct served tracing activities to isolate or quarantine as appropriate. We’ve also committed ourselves to providing dedicated air travel from basic training to what we call initial skills training when possible. The addition of basic military training here at case Keesler Air Force Base has successfully reduced the stress on Lackland infrastructure while maintaining quality training and enabling us to sustain our production goals. We plan to get up training here at Keesler through the end of fiscal year 2020. Our continuation of training under coach. The conditions has required a team effort between our recruiters are medical professionals as well as our training wing. It’s demanded intrusive leadership across these organizations, and it’s most evident in our military training instructors, who are the reason why just 2% of our trainees have tested positive since the 15th of March and all have returned successfully to training. I’m incredibly proud of how our airman have risen to the challenge, and I’ll turn it over to General Hibbert here before we get to your questions, I think you may tell us, and I want to thank you for your time today, whether in person in the Pentagon or physically distance for this interview, help protection of our force in our soldiers of the Army’s top priority. As the COVID-19 pandemic impacts our nation, we continue our response plan to train already and modernized army. Because of the strange, strange and health and safety measures adopted across our training enterprise, we have been able to quickly detect and respond to Kobe cases that occur in the training base. At any given day. There are approximately 46,000 soldiers training to become a member of the U. S. Army. As of today, and as of the start of the pandemic, less than 2% of the army recruits have tested positive for Kobe, 19 upon arrival, basic combat training and of those, 1.8% of those positives were all asymptomatic bus training, all soldiers who screen or test positive for exposure or symptoms of the virus. Our quarantine and given proper medical care and after recovery are cleared medically and return to train a cost are training center trainees, cadre drill sergeants and support personnel are physically screened daily, and drill sergeants conduct a daily formal Bonner train of those soldiers continuing to train. Today, we will discuss the Army’s adapted training model known as the two plus eight, and other mitigation measures used to protect our most valued asset are sold as our nation of just to a new way of life. The army continues to adapt and innovate, protecting the health and safety of our people while maintaining the readiness of our force. So again, thank you for your time. And I look forward to your question. Thank you, ma’am. And, sir, as a reminder for the media please provide your full name and agency prior to asking your question. Also, please limit your self to one question and one follow up. We’ll go to the phones lines. First terror cop of Ah McClatchy. Do you have a question? Terror? Hey, thanks for during this. So could you walk us through once you had all these asymptomatic? Um, that came back positive. Uh, what happened to that recruit at that point? Andi, have you been able to get all of them successfully through basic training after they were clear of the coronavirus? This is general, fellas. I can speak for the air Force first. So someone who tests positive when they arrive at basic training is removed from their flight and placed into isolation, I can tell you that all of our trainees who touched the positive upon arrival have recovered and been re entered into the training pipeline. Some of them are still in the training pipeline, so I can’t say all of them graduated from basic training, but none of them have not graduated from the training because of the COVID-19 virus. Um, over to General Hibbert. Yes, Tara. And for the army is the same model. So those soldiers test positive upon arrival are removed from there. Their platoon not a flight for the army until cleared medically to return to their platoon. And at this time, based on the numbers, those that have been cleared have returned to training. We have not had a had one graduating class since Kobe Pandemic has occurred on. The rest of the trainees are still in training at this time. Okay, thank you. And one bubble up. Please be made for the airport. Um, what’s the status of the expanded training at Keesler is not going to be extended into the fall and winter. Or was it just the one flight? So we resumed basic training at Keesler on the second of June. We had our first flight graduate today, and we will continue bringing 60 recruits per week to Keesler until the end of the fiscal year, with our last shipment scheduled for the 29th of September. We haven’t made a decision with regard to extending that program or not, and we will based that upon our requirements for fiscal year 21 us, they’re delivered by headquarters, Air Force as well as our Thank you. You moving to Ellen Mill Hiser of synopses. Ellen, do you have a question? Hi. Yes, Um, thank you so much for doing this today. You all have a very, very high rate of people who are testing positive and are asymptomatic. And yet you say you physically screen everybody every day. If they’re asymptomatic, what do you think you might capture? And are you doing any kind of surveillance testing throughout the training period to capture that? So this is General tell us from the airport taking this first. So, um, just because they’re asymptomatic, we still isolate them. If they tough, positive, and I would defer, I think I have general to go on the line to talk about what? The medical community, um, it is studying with regard Teoh, whether you’re in asymptomatic and whether you are still able to pass the virus on to someone else. But I will say we screened rigorously throughout training, regardless of whether a ninja vigil eyes is in what we call restricted movement in their 1st 14 days or whether they are conducting training for the remainder of the time, during which time there are times where we have activities where we cannot maintain physical distancing. And that includes both, um, questionnaires where the individuals are asked how they’re feeling throughout the day, the monitoring by their training instructors to identify symptoms, as well as that culture of safety that I talked about earlier, where we’re encouraging our trainees to come forward and talk about whether they’re not feeling well in the past, I can say our culture was such that we had a kind of quote, suck it up culture where we wanted you to push through regardless of how you were feeling. And that is absolutely the opposite of what we’re encouraging right now. We want our trainees to feel comfortable out coming forward. If they feel like they have symptoms so that we can not risk the health of the rest of the flight as well as the conjuring. I’m get them treated and get them back into training as quickly as possible. General to go. If you’re on the line, I would ask that you come up with this time. Sure. So we we began surveillance testing in early May, initially with entry testing for every recruit. So the 1st 7 uh, cohorts, that we brought in from the 17th of March. We just tested by a CDC guidelines when they had symptoms. We had six positive for about 2500 recruits during that time frame. Uh, since then, every recruit that comes in gets tested on arrival regardless. So that’s how we’ve detected the majority of recruits without symptoms. Uh, we also added, and late May at the end of the restriction of movement 14 day period exit testing. And we’ve picked up, uh, a symptomatic test in that regard as well. So when General Telus said 60% of our results have been asymptomatic, they were part of that surveillance testing. Uh, just one comment on what role do a symptomatic patients people without symptoms with COVID have in propagating the pandemic. It’s really unclear. The world organization says they’re not likely be a significant propagator. And again, we’re talking about people who never have symptoms, not the two days prior to developing symptoms for pre symptomatic and our experience. In those 1st 7 weeks, when we Onley tested people with symptoms, we didn’t have any, uh, any problem from not doing surveillance. So our experience is that those who never developed symptoms are likely not really important in spreading. Tove it over. Thank you, sir. Moving to Hayley Brisky of tasking purpose. Haley, you have a question? Yes. Thank you. I’m doing Hibbert dishes up for you, but way saw this week. I believe some what appeared the text messages from soldiers at Fort Benning who were sort of mentioning a backlog of your crew to arising were being quarantined. Is that something that is on your radar at all? And are there currently guidelines in place for, say, how many new recruits could be quarantined at one time upon arrival? If a training site sees this many number of new recruits been quarantines that they aren’t allowed to bring it anymore or what is sort of the policy around that? Haley, thank you very much for the question. Yes, that is on my radar. Aziz, I’m the proponent for all the army reception. Right now we continue to meet rvn strength. We continue to take trainees, and if they test positive within the 1st 24 hours of arriving at the training center, um whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, they’re put into, um, a corn into quarantine and right now across the Army. Like I said, we’re running about 2% positive rate that we have, and they stay in that situation for about a 14 day period. And each of our Army training centers have a location set aside of barracks for those trainees and an overflow if we happen to give more trainees and can fit in that Barrett. I saw the text messages reference for Benny at that location, and what they were doing is there were reports have a facility called Kelly Hill, where we used to do training that that they were getting up to standard for those trainees because it had been unused for a period of time. As we began to use it, we realized over some challenges with a C and a couple other issues in that building that we quickly jumped on, Um, as we began to use those facilities, and that was kind of the genesis of the text messages, Thank you and just gonna get the the last part of my question. Are there any guidelines in place with the training sites where you know there’s only a certain amount of people that you can take it? One time in those. The barracks. Airfare side in the overflow area. Is there any policy on that in place? No, man. We don’t have a policy on the number right now. We monitor that every week. Um, and the 80 sees report. They’re getting close to their capacity. We shift the trainees within our ability to another 80. See, that has passed. So we’re adjusting that flow based on the MLS. That that train he is and on the location where we can put those training. Thank you. So thank you. Movie to the room. Jenny Park. Do you have a question where I just wouldn’t ask about How would they do overseas a military training for the social distance? This? How would you do Concerned that these cases for overseas training, Military tree. So this is General. Tell us. So I had a hard time understanding the question was the question How are we conducting overseas training Overseas Middle 20 training exercises. So these military exercises, if if I’m understanding it. So for the air Force, the determination on whether to conduct our overseas military exercises is made, um, by the Combatant Commander in conjunction with the component. So at Second Air Force. We don’t make the decision, but to go forward with those training exercises based on their Covic conditions, then we provide support accordingly. And that could be to deliver trainers or military training teams to facilitate that or evaluators. And so we were respond on demand. And we comply with their conditions for either restricting their movement prior to departure and providing protected travel to the training site over to General Hibbert. Yeah, and for the Army. Um, and that is the same model is way responsible for insurance trainees get to the combatant commanders overseas. And then the combatant commanders in conjunction with the component will determine the type in the amount of Chinese that they do. You the phone lines Kyle Ren for of Army times. Kyle Hey, yeah, thanks for doing this. So I don’t know if you guys mentioned this already. My phone cut out earlier, but I was wondering if you guys could talk a bit about graduation rates. I know earlier in the process, the Army had talked about how they had have the number of recruits going to basic training. I was wondering if that’s still the case for the Army. Um, And then if you could talk about also the Air Force’s well, basically your production rates for their full capacity have has to be somewhere in the middle. This is general poet, so we’re what I would call over 90% of our traditional capacity. But we are at 100% production for what the Air Force is asking us to produce. For the end of this year, we had lowered our production to around 60% capacity when COVID began so that we could evaluate the ability of our trainers and the trainees to fight through. But we have since ramp back up. Um, in it. If that answers your question, I’ll hand off to General Hibbert. Yes, that’s always looking for the same thing from the army side. And then also, just maybe, to put a fine point on it, Do you expect any sort of shortfalls? Um, at the end of this fiscal year, that will need to be made up next fiscal year. So for the Air Force right now, they’re our headquarters has adjusted our target. Teoh. We started at 38,000 were down around 35 a half 1000. But what that accounts for is we are actually retaining above historic norms. So we’re going actually hit our instruments, feeling with our current production rates so way will not be able to produce more. Um, then the Air Force is asking us to produce, or we will hit our congressional feeling over to the Army that Kyle and for the Army were actually sit in the same situation as the Air Force is right now. We’re filling as of this last week at 90% Phil for all tree campos arriving into the training base and you’d asked about a graduation rate up. That and we’re still graduating, actually graduating better than we had previously. At about a 92% of those actually graduate from initial entry training. It moved to their first year of assignment. Reference are and strength numbers are numbers. Our target is in flux, as the Air Force mentioned, because then strength is the combination of recruiting and retention, and because of the current environment on the civilian sector, are retention is also through the roof and headquarters. D A. Keeps adjusting our targets to keep us within guidelines of our army and strength. It will not be because of our ability to recruit. Do we see? Thank you, generals. That’s all the time we have for questions today, General. Tallest man, do you have any final words? I just like to offer some final thanks for the, uh, for the role that the media is playing in helping us fight through for the support that you give to our forces on a daily basis on for helping us get the facts out as we know them and for being patient with us. COVID conditions change, and we have to alter our procedures accordingly. So again, thank you. You may have General Hibbert. Do you have any final words, sir? Yeah, I just want toe echoes. General Telesis comments Erin, thank the media for their efforts in getting, ah, getting the message out to the public about what the services in the army are doing to protect those, uh, come into the service. And I want to thank you for your time joining us today. Thank you, Generals. Both. I hope you’ll have a wonderful rest of your Friday. A wonderful weekend. This concludes today’s press briefing. Thank you.