The number of Covid-19 cases among crew members of a navy hospital ship tasked with relieving California hospitals amid the pandemic has risen to seven, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The seven have been isolated off the navy hospital ship Mercy, Cmdr John Fage, a 3rd Fleet spokesman, told the Union Tribune. He added the outbreak aboard had not affected the ship’s ability to to receive patients.
The Mercy left Naval Base San Diego on 23 March and arrived at Los Angeles four days later as part of the national response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The mission of the 1,000-bed ship and more than 800 medical personnel and support staff onboard is to relieve strain on local hospitals by providing care to patients who do not have Covid-19, allowing those hospitals to use intensive care units and ventilators for virus cases.
One sailor told the Union-Tribune there were concerns that the crew could have brought the virus onboard when they left San Diego, given that medical staff had been present at the screening area at Naval Medical Center San Diego before their deployment on the Mercy.
The news of the Mercy outbreak comes the same day that a crew member on the coronavirus-infected USS Theodore Roosevelt died of complications related to Covid-19. That marked the first Covid-19 death of an active-duty military member and came 11 days after the aircraft carrier’s captain was fired for raising concerns that the navy was failing to safeguard his crew.
The Roosevelt sailor who died, whose name and other identifying information were not immediately released, had tested positive for coronavirus on 30 March and was taken off the ship and placed in “isolation housing” along with four other sailors at a base in Guam. On 9 April, he was found unresponsive during a medical check, officials said.
For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause severe life-threatening illness, including pneumonia.
As of Monday, Los Angeles county public health authorities reported 9,420 positive cases and 320 deaths.
