NEW YORK — Those who already have lifetimes of service are playing major roles during this global pandemic. Local military personnel have been stepping up by leaving their homes to head to COVID-19 hot spots.
If you're in the military, you're always ready to serve. Right now, that means traveling to places with large numbers of COVID-19 cases to fight the pandemic, which is sickening people across the country.
“It's a great feeling knowing that someone's grandmother or their son or daughter or father is going to be taken care of,” Army Major Eugene Thomas III said. “They come here. They have the world's best doctors from the Department of Defense helping them and taking care of them.”
“We have to be ready to act at a moment's notice just to make sure that they're taken care of to the best of our ability,” Navy Senior Chief Michael Verest agreed.
Major Thomas and Sr. Chief Verest are both on the front lines. As more and more cases of COVID-19 came to light, Verest knew he was going to get called up to serve. He's a respiratory therapist whose reserve unit is out of Bethesda.
“It's stressful as the first time with my children having to say, 'Daddy's got to go,'” he said. “But it was for the greater good, so it's something we were definitely all behind.”
Verest was sent to New York City's Javits Center, the site of the Army's temporary field hospital.
It's a place Thomas, a Gaithersburg native, worked to setup. The goal of the sprawling site was to relieve stress on the city's civilian hospitals.
“I was happy to help and excited to help because that's why I joined the military,” Thomas recalled.
Thomas is a medical planner in the Army. He saw the Javits Center transformed from an empty convention space to a place where military health care professionals would be able to save lives.
“I have a true appreciation for what you can do when you get a lot of different entities all pushing and growing towards one common goal and that's taking care of and helping the people of New York,” he explained.
In order to do that, Thomas had to think about and plan for what doctors and nurses might need. His team focused on how they can get it, resupply and make sure the right orders are in place.
“Knowing that I have thought about everything to ensure that they have the right equipment, personnel, whatever it is that would help the patient,” he said.
Without Thomas' work, Verest and other medical staff wouldn't be able to do their jobs. Verest said the patients they treated at the Javits Center varied from mild symptoms to the most devastating of cases.
“We initially start them up on some oxygen to help their body adjust and compensate for that,” he relayed. “Low levels of oxygen typically work great. Most people once we start getting medications involved, they seem to help a lot.”
“Some people their body, their lungs get so ravaged by the disease, they have to be put on a ventilator, which essentially will breathe for them, which allows their body to fight the virus while we're supporting them,” he added.
The Javits Center discharged its last patients Friday. In the month of operations, they treated about 1,000 people. Some of the equipment and supplies will stay at the convention center in case there's a second wave of the virus. The staff will be re-deployed.
Thomas is now at a base in New Jersey helping move personnel. Verest will be heading back to Bethesda. As they wait to see where they're needed next in the military's pandemic relief efforts, they can't help but feel grateful to all those back here at home.
“We just want to say thank you so much for all your support,” Verest told us. “It really does mean a lot to know that your hometown is behind you and making sure that you're not feeling forgotten.”