Navy hospital ships won't treat coronavirus patients and will take weeks to deploy

[G_j]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mark-esper-confirms-navy-hospital-ships-wont-treat-coronavirus-patients-and-will-take-weeks-to-deploy/ar-BB11nyKy?ocid=sf2

Mark Esper confirms Navy hospital ships won't treat coronavirus patients and will take weeks to deploy

By Ryan Browne, CNN

Defense Secretary Mark Esper made clear to CNN that two Navy hospital ships being deployed to help respond to the coronavirus outbreak will not treat patients suffering from the virus and will take weeks to deploy.

The Pentagon also confirmed they will provide 2,000 hospital beds. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that his state alone needs an additional 50,000.

"I have directed, as the President has mentioned, the hospital ships Mercy and Comfort to be prepared to deploy to increase the nation's medical capacity and we've also alerted a variety of field and expeditionary hospitals to be prepared to deploy as well as needed," Esper said at the White House on Wednesday.

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However, the ships will not treat coronavirus patients. Instead they will be used to treat other illnesses or injuries, and free up capacity in civilian hospitals that are expected to be overwhelmed with cases of the virus. Also, the fact the Comfort is not expected to deploy for a number of weeks means it will not provide support if the number of cases and deaths spike in the near term, as many experts have predicted.

[KentuckyWoman]

1. This has already been happening to an extent.

I have a cousin in California who unfortunately had a heart attack last week. The closest hospital was full with Corona so they routed him to a Va hospital with an ICU bed.

Bypass 3 days ago and probably home by end of week.

[CrispyQ]

2. Weeks to deploy? WTF?

As popular as bio-disaster movies are, why aren't we more prepared? It was inevitable that something like this was coming. Too many of our fellow citizens have been coasting on a "we're number one" high for decades now, even as evidence to the contrary piles up.

[nitpicker]

3. These MSC ships were NEVER meant to be deployed at a moment's notice.

As I said earlier, these ships are normally kept in "96-hour" operational status, where the skeleton Military Sealift Command civilian mariners onboard are augmented by additional mariners and the ship is activated. THEN military medical personnel are pulled from Navy military treatment facilities and supplies loaded, so to go from a cold start takes in total a week or more. Normally, activations of the Comfort and Mercy are scheduled a year or more in advance.

If a ship is in maintenance, first it has to be put back together and be made ready to get underway.

[Dennis Donovan]

4. That's fine - they're needed for everything else besides covid pts like heart attacks, accidents...

Gov Cuomo said last night that they'll have to segregate hospitals to COVID-only pts.

The "weeks to deploy" part is inexcusable. They should've been ready weeks ago! We *knew* this was coming!