Washington (CNN) Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Monday that he has received requests for assistance from multiple governors and stated the military "can't meet everybody's needs," as the coronavirus pandemic continues to escalate.

However, he did say that the Pentagon is looking to send military field hospitals to New York and Seattle to help support local medical systems which are struggling to cope with a large number of virus cases. That would be in addition to the hospital ships being sent to New York and Los Angeles and the military working to convert civilian buildings into hospitals.

"I've spoken with seven, eight, nine, 10 governors so far. Each one of them has had requests for field hospitals. Those who have been along the coastline have talked about the need for ships, so we clearly can't meet everybody's needs with what we have in our inventory so we rely on (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) to do the assessment, validation and then the prioritization," Esper said.

Esper said he has ordered five expeditionary medical facilities to prepare to deploy, though the location of those deployments will depend on guidance from FEMA.

"Right now I anticipate sending a hospital to Seattle and a hospital to New York City and beyond that once that's confirmed we will look at sending to other places, and as necessary we will continue to alert units to prepare to deploy and deploy them as appropriate," Esper added.

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