This post has been updated with statements from Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

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"We've already given orders to the Navy… to lean forward in terms of getting them ready to deploy," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters on Tuesday.

The ships will now begin the several days-long process of bringing aboard medical staff and equipment ahead of deploying along the East and West coasts, a defense official confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday afternoon.

Two sources told USNI News that the idea was for the ships to provide relief for coastal hospital systems, with the ships taking on non-COVID-19 cases and allowing the hospitals to focus on the most critical patients suffering from the virus. The Pentagon also has extensive equipment for erecting field hospitals in addition to the hospital ships, but those facilities are optimized for trauma cases, with several beds close together, and not for infectious patients.

"So one of the ways you could use field hospitals, hospital ships or things in between is to take the pressure off of civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases, to open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases," Esper said.