Increased activity at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Vancouver over the weekend was not in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, and was instead linked to a previously scheduled trip to Central America.
The trip, which saw 55 soldiers depart for Honduras on Sunday, was part of a mission planned over the last two years, Lt. Col. Andrew Plassmeyer said. Those soldiers were just “around their building, doing their final checks,” Plassmeyer said.
The trip out of Vancouver was nothing new. The U.S. military has quietly maintained some sort of presence in Honduras over the last 30 or so years, he added.
“Units are constantly rotating in and out of there. You don’t hear about it much,” Plassmeyer said.
But the increased traffic at the reserve center, 15005 N.E. 65th St., sparked the curiosity of some Columbian readers who wrote in to ask if the military was mobilizing the 396th Combat Support Hospital, which is stored at the Vancouver facility.
Not so, Plassmeyer said. Personnel are, however, taking stock of some of the equipment stored at the site in preparation for the possibility.
“They are also inventorying and servicing all their ventilators, just in case,” Plassmeyer said.
COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is a respiratory illness that could strain the country’s supply of ventilators if enough people fall seriously ill at once.
However, the military field hospital had not received orders to fully activate as of Tuesday.
“I think the Army is fairly reluctant to mobilize the surgical hospitals, because most of those people already work in civilian hospitals,” Plassmeyer said.
