Pentagon reluctantly moves to help combat coronavirus

The US military has begun to slowly step in to aid the federal government’s coronavirus response despite reluctance among Pentagon leaders, who are concerned the domestic deployments could distract from their primary mission of protecting national security.

The military’s reluctance has become a lightning rod in some state governments, which have called on the Pentagon to, among other things, deploy the Army Corps of Engineers, a 37,000-strong public works agency in the Department of Defense.

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, which now has the most Covid-19 cases in the US with more than 4,100, has been particularly vocal, calling on the Corps to build new overflow hospitals.

Read the full story and more in the Financial Times.