The U.S. Navy is helping ease the burden on overwhelmed civilian hospitals by agreeing to take patients who do not have the COVID-19 virus causing havoc around the globe.
Defense Department officials explained that the USNS Mercy, which departed San Diego on Monday for the Port of Los Angeles, will fill its 1,000 hospital beds with patients other than those with COVID-19. The ship, a massive converted supertanker noteworthy for its all white paint scheme with red crosses, will only be taking transfer patients, leaving hospitals and medical centers with more capacity to tackle the coronavirus patients.
“If they’re an intensive-care unit patient, they’ll come to our intensive-care unit,” said Navy Capt. John Rotruck, a Navy physician in charge of the medical personnel aboard the Mercy. “If they’re on their hospital’s ward, they’ll come to our ward.”
More than 1,000 Navy doctors, nurses and other medical professionals assigned to the hospital ship will be able to handle just about any medical need a patient might have.
“We have a pretty broad surgical capability as well,” Dr. Rotruck said.
Navy officials said the ship won’t be providing any medical service for coronavirus patients. In fact, every patient coming aboard will be screened and tested if necessary. Any patient who comes up positive for COVID-19 will be sent back ashore, officials said.
The USNS Comfort, sister ship to the Mercy, is slated to go to New York once its maintenance needs are dealt with, officials said.
Other military services also are joining the fight against the coronavirus. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun converting old hotels, college dormitories and other buildings into temporary medical facilities.
Meanwhile, at least two Army field hospitals are being sent to New York City and Seattle to bolster medical attention in those hard-hit area. Other military hospitals are on standby for possible deployment, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Monday.
While the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in charge of the operation, the secretary said he envisions the field hospitals, with about 250 beds, filling the gap until the Corps of Engineers has finished its work.
“We can then pull out and go on to the next site and again cover that gap for the next city,” Mr. Esper said.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services will also be setting up a temporary hospital in Seattle. Mr. Esper said he has spoken with almost a dozen governors since the coronavirus was first detected in the U.S.
“Each of them has had requests for field hospitals. We clearly can’t meet everybody’s needs with what we have in our inventory, so we rely on FEMA to do the assessment, the validation and then the prioritization,” Mr. Esper said.
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