The Pentagon is considering banning recruits who have been hospitalized by coronavirus

There are special concerns about whether enough recruits will be able to join before there is a testing regime that is strict enough to ensure they are fit enough to attend training.

This is a priority for the military who live and operate at close range, and especially for sailors on ships at sea for months. The Pentagon recognizes that it is very important to ensure that virus testing is accurate enough so that the unit can be safely used.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at the Pentagon Tuesday that the department would randomly test groups of people “to understand how many symptoms or carriers there might be out there.”

The focus of attention is on efforts to understand how much strength might show no symptoms but still have a virus.

“One of the challenges we know is asymptomatic disease transmission. This is something we have known for a long time but what we don’t appreciate until TR is the fact that we experience very high levels in the military,” Esper said during the Brookings Institution online on Monday.

The Navy calculated the asymptomatic level among Roosevelt’s crew might have reached 60% or greater initially. Seventeen seamen who tested negative when they were exiled from the ship for 14 days are now tested again after three of them tested positive even though they had no symptoms, according to a navy official.