The Defense Department will provide 5 million medical-grade air-filtering masks — 1 million of them available immediately — as well as 2,000 ventilators as it steps up its role in the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said.

The Pentagon can also make the Navy’s two hospital ships available on the East and West coasts, Esper told reporters Tuesday. But he emphasized that the ships and other military resources would best be able to treat some trauma cases to make room for coronavirus patients at civilian hospitals that are properly equipped to handle infections.

“They don’t have necessarily the space, the segregated spaces, you need to deal with infectious diseases,” Esper said at the Pentagon. “So one of the ways by which you could use either field hospitals, the hospital ships or things in between, is to take the pressure off of civilian hospitals when it comes to trauma cases, is to open up civilian hospital rooms for infectious diseases.”