Nevada National Guard general talks coronavirus response

By John Sadler

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Maj. Gen. Ondra Berry, the top officer in the Nevada National Guard, is managing the Guard’s coronavirus response after Gov. Steve Sisolak activated the military on April 1.

In a news conference announcing his decision, Sisolak called the Guard the “best of the best.”

"From delivering critical medical equipment and supplies to providing a labor force and planning the massive logistical operations needed to get resources from point A to point B, no one is better," the governor said.

Berry said the Guard will focus on the distribution of medical supplies and security at donation sites. He said most Nevadans won’t notice the Guard activity.

Here’s what Berry said about the Guard’s activation, edited and condensed for clarity.

What is the Guard’s role during this pandemic?

The governor has put us on what’s called state active duty, and that gives him he ability to align us with some of his priorities for Nevada.

Right now, one of the biggest things that we’re going to be doing is dealing with the many donations that are coming in in facilities in Las Vegas and Reno and outside of Carson City — putting together the logistics behind that.

In addition to what people are donating or giving to the state, we’re also in the process of ordering what we call personal protective equipment …We’re looking at are we getting it to the right citizens, the right first responders and the right locations in a timely manner?

There may be some limited security that we do at some facilities, but those are the two asks right now.

Will people notice any day-to-day difference in their lives now that the Guard has been activated?

I’d just remind people that we have guardsmen all over the state. We have full-time employees, and they’re your neighbors, they go to your church, have kids in softball and Little League, all those things. The citizens are used to seeing us in uniform; we have facilities around the state. We’re out there every day.

There won’t be a big influx of National Guard being visible other than what you see right now, because you have full-time people who work every single day wearing the uniform.

You mentioned security assignments earlier. Could you give some more details on that?

This would be mainly at locations where there’s a large influx of resources or where people are bringing in a lot of materials, or if we have some sort of, say, designated location where people could drop off masks. We may do some traffic control there. We wouldn’t be guarding any businesses, anything like that.

Will Guard members be supplied with personal protective equipment?

We do have that available for them. In addition, we have medical personnel who have the responsibility of monitoring the health of the guardsmen who will be activated.

We want to make sure that, prior to coming onto state active duty, when they’re going on shifts and when they’re leaving shifts, that we’re monitoring their health and making sure that we’re taking all the precautions.

We recognize if we are unhealthy or we contract the virus, we can’t do our best work for the citizens.

Will you work around Guard members with essential jobs during this crisis?

When you look at medical or health care personnel, we are not going to touch them, because you are really hurting the community when you do that. Those are, so to speak, off the list because we want them in their jobs.

We’re very sensitive to those who are providing those essential services to our communities.

They will not be activated because we have plenty of other people we can use. So I just want to reassure everybody that medical personnel, first responders and those who are helping provide essential services to the businesses that are still open and are critical to what’s going on with this pandemic will not be activated.

How many service members are being activated?

Over 100 as of April 3, but it could change very quickly. One of my responsibilities is to really watch what’s happening with my peer group and what’s going on in other communities and to look at modeling in terms of where we could see a surge.

You can kind of see what’s going to happen based on what’s going on in some of the larger metropolitan areas. We’re trying to be predictive in making sure we have the personnel that are able to handle whatever may come up.

The single best thing that could happen is people are compliant with the governor’s ask and stay home and isolated, practice good hygiene and social distancing. If you want to see less of the Guard, let us do what we’ve been asked to do.