Nevada National Guard members install social distancing stickers while setting up a temporary coronavirus testing site in Las Vegas on Aug. 3, 2020.
John Locher/AP
Nevada National Guard officials are preparing to shut down their COVID-19 mission April 1.
At 700 days and 1,139 guardsmen and women deployed at its April 2020 peak, Lt. Emerson Marcus said it was the largest and longest deployment in Nevada Guard history.
In the process, he and Col. Brett Thompson said the Guard administered 831,227 COVID tests and 818,661 direct vaccinations.
Over and above that, Guard personnel supported efforts to test 2.5 million Nevadans and vaccinate 2.9 million people.
Asked what he and his troops learned, Thompson asked, “what haven’t we learned?”
He said they got “exceptionally good” at activating guardsmen and women. He said they learned a lot about working with other state and local partners and how to support other missions, including traffic control, warehouse distribution and contact tracing, alternate care sites, sanitization, data processing and incident management among other functions.
“The Nevada Guard has never been busier or more visible than it has in the past two years,” Thompson said.
And if called on again by a new variant or other crisis, he said the Guard will put all of the lessons learned these past two years into practice.
