The captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt nuclear-powered aircraft carrier told the Pentagon that COVID-19 is spreading uncontrollably through his ship and called for immediate help to quarantine its crew.
However, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on Tuesday ruled out evacuating the ship, whose plight bears similarities to that on civilian cruise ships where the illness spread.
US Navy Captain Brett Crozier wrote in a four-page letter that his staff had not been able to stem the spread of COVID-19 through the vessel’s 4,000 crew members, describing a dire situation aboard the vessel now docked at Guam.
Photo: AFP / US Navy / Paul L. Archer
“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” Crozier wrote, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published a copy of the letter on Tuesday.
“The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating,” Crozier wrote, referring to the ship’s “inherent limitations of space.”
He asked to be able to quarantine nearly the entire crew onshore at Guam, saying that keeping them all on board the ship was an “unnecessary risk.”
There is little opportunity for “social distancing,” which US civilians have been told to practice, among the cramped passageways and sleeping quarters of an aircraft carrier.
“Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed US nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure,” Crozier said. “This is a necessary risk.”
Asked on CBS Evening News whether it was time for an evacuation, Esper said: “I don’t think we’re at that point.”
He added that supplies and medical assistance were being moved out to the Roosevelt.
“We’re providing additional medical personnel as they need it,” he said.
“None of them are seriously ill” and the navy is “trying to make sure that we contain the virus, that we deploy testing kits. We get a good assessment of how much of the crew is infected,” he added.
The newspaper said that more than 100 aboard the warship had been confirmed infected with the novel coronavirus, about four times the figures given on Friday last week.
The navy did not confirm the contents of the letter, which was also reported by the New York Times.
A navy official said on condition of anonymity that Crozier had alerted his Pacific fleet leaders on Sunday of the problems aboard the carrier.
“The ship’s commanding officer advocated for housing more members of the crew in facilities that allow for better isolation,” the official said.
“Navy leadership is moving quickly to take all necessary measures to ensure the health and safety of the crew of USS Theodore Roosevelt, and is pursuing options to address the concerns raised by the commanding officer,” they added.
Some speculated that the infection could have begun with a stop in Vietnam by the Roosevelt.
The carrier put in to Da Nang for five days early last month, when the virus was raging in China and more than a dozen cases had been detected in Vietnam.
Acting US Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly on Tuesday told CNN that he agreed with Crozier on the seriousness of the situation, and that they had been working over the past few days to move people off of the Roosevelt.
However, facilities to sequester the afflicted sailors in Guam, which hosts a major US naval base, are limited, he said.
“We are having to talk to the government there to see if we can get some hotel space, create some tent-type facilities there,” Modly said.
In his letter, Crozier referred to a study about the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined off Japan earlier this year.
The study concluded that early evacuation of passengers and crew would have prevented many more infections.
Ten passengers died and more than 700 people who were on board contracted the virus.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS