The principal general of the guard also confirms that less than 200 guards received COVID-19.
Up to 7,000 national guards will remain in Washington for about another seven weeks to help federal law enforcement agencies concerned about potential domestic unrest, said the Guard general.
“It is probably mid-March now,” General Daniel Hokanson told reporters on Saturday.
The size of this force can be adjusted depending on requests from local law enforcement agencies, he added. Whether the remaining guards will remain armed will be decided by federal authorities.
A US official told ABC News that the agencies were seeing “conversations” between extremist groups discussing possible unrest in the nation’s capital.
As for the troops that make up the 7,000, Hokanson added: “Some of them will be the people who are already here. Some states are going to rotate other people and we are working closely with the states to determine this next.”
Hokanson made his comments while making his daily visit to the guards who are protecting the Capitol. At the spacious Capitol Visitor Center, he also met with guards from Indiana and Virginia, who were taking a short break, and asked if they were getting everything they needed.
On Friday, guards were once again able to use the rest facilities after the public outcry generated by photos showing them resting in an unheated parking lot. The use of the garage occurred after a request was made to the Guard to stop using indoor spaces on the Capitol grounds.
Hokanson also confirmed that less than 200 of the 25,000 national guards who provided security on the day of inauguration contracted COVID-19, an infection rate of less than 1%.
“We do everything we can, but we think that number is low,” said Hokanson. The infected guards will remain in Washington as long as they are sick, as some of the 25,000 who were present for the inauguration day began returning to their home states on Saturday.