Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon on May 25, 2023, in Arlington, Virginia. (Win McNamee/TNS)

WASHINGTON — White House and Pentagon officials said Monday that they expect Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will remain in his job after he failed to immediately notify President Joe Biden and other top federal officials that he was taken to the hospital with a severe illness and stayed there for several days.

“The secretary has no plans to resign. He continues to stay focused on conducting his duties,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman. “We are currently reviewing how we can improve these notification procedures to include White House and congressional notifications.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who spent 16 months at the Pentagon as Austin’s first press secretary, said Monday that Biden’s No. 1 focus is Austin’s recovery.

“The president respects the fact that Secretary Austin took ownership for the lack of transparency,” Kirby said.

The remarks followed intense criticism from lawmakers and news outlets over Austin’s delay in providing information about his medical procedure and hospital stay. Ryder said Austin, 70, was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on Jan. 1 after experiencing “severe pain” related to an elective medical procedure that he underwent on Dec. 22. However, no one at the Defense Department notified the White House, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Congress or the public for several days. On Jan. 2, Austin transferred some of his more pressing responsibilities to Hicks, who was on vacation in Puerto Rico last week.

“Due to the secretary’s condition and on the basis of medical advice, certain authorities of the secretary of defense were transferred,” Ryder told reporters Monday at the Pentagon. “The secretary and deputy secretary’s staff, as well as the [Joint Chiefs of Staff], were notified that the transfer had occurred through regular email notification procedures.”

It was another two days before Hicks and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan were told Austin was ill and in the hospital. Once Hicks learned of the situation, she began working on plans to notify government officials and lawmakers and was prepared to return to Washington on Friday. But she was advised to stay in Puerto Rico because Austin was close to resuming all his duties by then, Ryder said.

The Pentagon press secretary also identified other factors that he said contributed to the delay in communication, such as Austin’s chief of staff being sick with the flu and the lack of information about the secretary’s condition.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin provides testimony in May 2023 at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. (Chad J. McNeeley/Defense Department)

“I recognize that I should have tried to learn more and to press for an earlier public acknowledgment,” Ryder said. “We are currently reviewing how we can improve these notification procedures to include White House and congressional notifications.”

Biden has not yet spoken publicly about the issue, but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that the president has “complete confidence” in Austin. Kirby also acknowledged there had been a failure in communications.

“There’s an expectation that when a Cabinet official becomes hospitalized, that that will be notified up the chain of command. There is that expectation,” he said. “We will take a look at the process and procedure here and try to learn from this experience.”

Austin seemed to acknowledge in a statement Saturday that he made a misstep by keeping his hospitalization private.

“I understand the media concerns about transparency and I recognize I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better,” he said. “But this is important to say: This was my medical procedure, and I take full responsibility for my decisions about disclosure.”

Ryder said Austin resumed all his duties while in the hospital on Friday, but he didn’t say when he might be discharged. He also hasn’t detailed the nature of the complications that Austin experienced Jan. 1 or what the initial medical procedure was.

Keeping Austin’s condition secret for several days has prompted scrutiny from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill because Austin was treated in the intensive care unit at Walter Reed before he was moved to a different, private facility.

“When one of the country’s two national command authorities is unable to perform their duties, military families, members of Congress and the American public deserve to know the full extent of the circumstances,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Members [of Congress] must be briefed on a full accounting of the facts immediately.”

“We are concerned with how the disclosure of the secretary’s condition was handled,” Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Adam Smith, D-Wash., said in a joint statement. Rogers is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and Smith is the panel’s top-ranking Democrat.

“Several questions remain unanswered including what the medical procedure and resulting complications were, what the secretary’s current health status is, how and when the delegation of the secretary’s responsibilities was made, and the reason for the delay in notification to the president and Congress,” they wrote. “Transparency is vitally important. Secretary Austin must provide these additional details on his health and the decision-making process that occurred in the past week as soon as possible.”

Austin has not directly engaged often with news reporters since assuming the post of defense secretary in January 2021, and he hasn’t been made available to Pentagon reporters for months.

“The public has a right to know when U.S. Cabinet members are hospitalized, under anesthesia or when duties are delegated as the result of any medical procedure,” the Pentagon Press Association board of directors said in a statement, calling the lack of transparency “an outrage.” “That has been the practice even up to the president’s level. As the nation’s top defense leader, Secretary Austin has no claim to privacy in this situation.”

Federal law requires all federal executive agencies to report any vacancies of an office to Congress and its routine for all Cabinet-level secretaries to make an announcement any time they are hospitalized or transfer any duties to a subordinate. In mid-2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland made such an announcement a full week before he underwent a medical procedure.

“At a time when there are growing threats to U.S. military service members in the Middle East and the U.S. is playing key national security roles in the wars in Israel and Ukraine, it is particularly critical for the American public to be informed about the health status and decision-making ability of its top defense leader,” the Pentagon Press Association said.