Navy Hospital Ship Reaches New York. However It’s Not Made to Comprise Coronavirus.

HomeUS Politics

Navy Hospital Ship Reaches New York. However It’s Not Made to Comprise Coronavirus.

However throughout the hanging white and purple hull of the Consolation, among the crew members say they're scared that they're tempting destiny by


However throughout the hanging white and purple hull of the Consolation, among the crew members say they’re scared that they’re tempting destiny by dropping anchor in New York harbor. As of every week in the past, the crew had not been knowledgeable of the screening procedures for sufferers coming aboard, apart from temperature checks, in response to one individual aboard the Consolation conversant in the scenario.

He added that there was some speak of conducting X-ray examinations — in an effort to examine the lungs for proof of the virus — however it’s unclear if these are continuing.

Navy officers acknowledge that it is going to be extraordinarily tough, but paramount, to make sure nobody with coronavirus will get on board. The ship’s crew won’t be allowed off the ship; there will probably be no visits into Manhattan and naturally no journeys to bars or eating places for takeout. Ship personnel will probably be doing temperature checks and scans and are nonetheless engaged on extra methods to display screen sufferers earlier than they’re allowed on board, officers mentioned.

With 12 working rooms, 1,000 hospital beds, radiology providers, a laboratory, pharmacy and CT scanner, the Consolation is its personal fully-staffed hospital. It responded to the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and confirmed up off the coast of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. It has even been to New York earlier than, when, within the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist assaults, the Consolation supplied support and medical assist largely for emergency medical employees.

It floated within the Arabian Sea in the course of the Iraq conflict in 2003, receiving and treating injured Marines and troopers. Treating fight wounds is its important operate. The ship, a refurbished oil tanker that was commissioned in 1987, has by no means earlier than been concerned in a response to an infectious illness pandemic, Captain Amersbach mentioned.

However different army hospitals have seen their very own share of sudden mysterious infectious illnesses.

Lt. Gen. Ron Place, director of the Protection Well being Company, recalled that in the course of the early levels of the Iraq conflict, from 2003 to 2005, Military medics abruptly began seeing pneumonia circumstances in “in any other case younger, wholesome, what-should-be low-risk service members.” Alarmed, the army began digging and realized that there was a brand new sort of micro organism in Iraq that American troops weren’t used to, and the publicity had led to problems.



www.nytimes.com