State activation and quarantine requirements post mission

[JamesL]

Just informed by higher that if our guard unit is deployed to assist in CONUS COVID-19 missions, that soldiers involved in direct care/contact with patients will be quarantined for 2 weeks post mission regardless if they were wearing proper PPE or not. I have confirmed this at the state level - per them, this is a force health protection requirement. Is anyone able to link me to the DoD directive that states this? While it makes sense to quarantine soldiers returning OCONUS, it is not consistent with current CDC guidelines for domestic healthcare providers. A lot of my soldiers are healthcare providers and a 2-week quarantine would be a big burden on their local health systems. Appreciate any help.

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[militaryPHYS]

Level 3 travel or known contact with COVID+ patient. Will try to find memo

 

[Monty Python]

Navy Reserve news story with guidance:

COVID-19: Important Information for U.S. Navy Reservists

Effective immediately, the U.S. Navy Reserve is implementing new rules and requirements for Reservists in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

www.navy.mil

Actual message (go to para 7 on page 2):

https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/USNRFC/2020/03/15/file_attachments/1401426/ALNAVRESFORCOM%20008_20.pdf

 

[JamesL]

Really appreciate it folks.

 

[JamesL]

Does anyone have the directives from the Army and Air Force Side?

 

[notdeadyet]

I'm curious how this works with Reservist docs. I work in an ER and will likely be having daily "contact" with COVID+ patients where I am.

How does this work for drill or activation? Or is DoD defining contact as contact without proper PPE (which will hopefully not be for another week).

 

[jurassicpark]

With more States mobilizing the Guard, I wonder how this will work? With manpower so short, when they activate the Guard docs they're pulling them from somewhere else. Robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak. Say a hospitalist in a rural city managing a full house and ICU all of a sudden activated?

Or would this not violate Posse Comitatus if in "advisory roles" and deploy regular active duty medical personnel to supplement local doctors?

 

[deleted480308]

With more States mobilizing the Guard, I wonder how this will work? With manpower so short, when they activate the Guard docs they're pulling them from somewhere else. Robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak. Say a hospitalist in a rural city managing a full house and ICU all of a sudden activated?

Or would this not violate Posse Comitatus if in "advisory roles" and deploy regular active duty medical personnel to supplement local doctors?

I don't have verification but a prior service attending told me they saw a DOD official on tv saying the guard would be trying to avoid pulling medical resources for that reason....but I can't imagine a governor can resist the look of "doing something" by calling up a bunch of people

 

[TheEarDoc]

I don't have verification but a prior service attending told me they saw a DOD official on tv saying the guard would be trying to avoid pulling medical resources for that reason....but I can't imagine a governor can resist the look of "doing something" by calling up a bunch of people

My guess is most guard called up will not be medical folks and instead will be regular soldiers who can help with things like crowd control, distributing food, etc., and they will not call up medical folks such as CSH/FSH units unless things really go sideways as they wouldn't want to pull these medical providers away from the community and providing care.

 

[pgg]

I don't have verification but a prior service attending told me they saw a DOD official on tv saying the guard would be trying to avoid pulling medical resources for that reason....but I can't imagine a governor can resist the look of "doing something" by calling up a bunch of people

The urge to "do something" is a powerful force for harm in medicine, and life in general.

The Navy is deploying its two hospital ships, the Comfort and Mercy. Comfort is going to New York, and Mercy is going to Los Angeles.

Now, of course to staff these ships, they need to pull physicians, nurses, techs, and other support staff from military hospitals. At this time, those hospitals are not taxed with COVID-19 patients the way NYC is. But I think we all understand that they will be. So we're taking personnel from their usual, more-or-less ideal practice environments, and putting them on platforms with inherent limitations and compromises.

The current plan as I understand it is that the two hospital ships will only take on non-COVID-19 patients in an effort to relieve some of the burden of overwhelmed hospitals. It strikes me as absolute fantasy to think you're going to pull uninfected persons from a hospital overwhelmed by a pandemic and not get any cases on the ships. And again ... these are ships. Ships where "social distancing" of crew members is physically impossible. Ships that routinely have outbreaks of viral URIs and diarrheal illness during ordinary humanitarian operations when there isn't a pandemic going on.

So. I can't say I'm bursting with confidence that this is a good idea. But we're "doing something" ... I guess we'll see how things go. There's certainly a benefit to surging medical capacity to the epicenter of an epidemic or other disaster. So we'll see.

 

[notdeadyet]

Yep. We've seen what a swell idea it is to have COVID on boats.