"Our capabilities are focused on trauma ... they don't have necessarily the segregated spaces that you need to deal with infectious diseases," Esper said, adding that building field hospitals or deploying the hospital ships could "take the pressure off of civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases to open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases."

In other measures, the Pentagon will make available up to 5 million N95 respirator masks and other personal protective equipment from its own reserves and distribute up to 2,000 deployable ventilators to the Department of Health and Human Services, Esper said.

“2,000 doesn’t put much of a dent into it, but we can offer what we have," he said.

In addition, the department has made its 14 certified coronavirus testing labs available to test non-DoD personnel, and will soon add two more labs for that purpose.

Esper also addressed the suggestion by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that the department make the Army Corps of Engineers available to build field hospitals and provide other support, noting that it might be quicker to take on such projects at a state or local level.

