News of the infection came a day after President Donald Trump relented to pressure from New York hospitals and allowed the Comfort to begin accepting patients who had contracted the virus.
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Crew Member Aboard USNS Comfort Is Infected With Coronavirus
A crew member aboard the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort tested positive for the coronavirus, and several others have gone into isolation, the Navy said Tuesday, the latest setback in the ship’s troubled mission to New York to assist in the pandemic response.
Crew Member Aboard USNS Comfort Is Infected With Coronavirus
The ship arrived last week with great fanfare and was supposed to relieve pressure on New York’s overburdened hospitals by taking patients suffering from other ailments. But bureaucratic hurdles, as well as a sharp decline in hospitalizations unrelated to the virus, resulted in few patients being transferred to the ship.
By Thursday, the 1,000-bed ship had only 20 patients. The empty beds angered hospital leaders, whose facilities have been overwhelmed with people sick with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
On Monday, Trump agreed that the Comfort would begin taking in people who tested positive for the virus.
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A Navy spokeswoman said the discovery of an infected crew member would not affect the Comfort’s mission in New York. “It does not affect the ability of the Comfort to receive patients at all,” Elizabeth Baker, the spokeswoman, said.
As of Tuesday morning, there were 44 patients on board, she said, meaning most of the Comfort’s beds still remained unused.
The infected crew member, who was not publicly identified, was not a medical worker and had no contact with patients, Baker said. She said she did not know how the crew member was infected.
All members of the crew tested negative for the virus before leaving the Comfort’s port in Norfolk, Virginia, she said, and have not left the ship since arriving in New York a week ago.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .
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