After urging by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, President Trump said on Wednesday that he’s dispatching one of the Navy’s 1,000-bed hospital ships to New York City. A second such ship will go elsewhere.
The USNS Comfort will anchor in New York Harbor, augmenting land-based hospitals struggling with the snowballing Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
“Pentagon officials said it was possible that the Comfort could absorb non-coronavirus patients, potentially freeing up hospital beds in Manhattan for infectious cases,” reports the New York Times.
The USNS Mercy will be deployed to another location, not yet determined.
Describing the two vessels as being in “tip top shape,” Trump promised they’ll depart “in the next week or so.”
But it may not happen that quickly.
The Comfort is “currently undergoing maintenance somewhere on the east coast and there are no medical personnel on board,” NBC News reports, adding that the Mercy “is also being spruced-up,” apparently on the west coast, “and lacks a medical crew.”
In a statement, the Navy said both ships “are currently working to complete scheduled maintenance cycles and identify necessary medical staffing to deploy as soon as possible.”
It’s unclear just how long “as soon as possible” might prove to be.
New York state now has nearly 2,400 confirmed Covid-19 cases and the number is rising by the hour, there and across the country.
“Health experts estimate the peak of the pandemic won’t be for another 45 days, and it could bring tens of thousands of more cases,” reports U.S. News.
Trump and Cuomo are fierce political adversaries who have rarely seen eye-to-eye on anything. The pandemic apparently brought them together, at least for now.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Cuomo said he and the president have “spoken multiple times” about the need to expand health-care capacity, and have agreed that they are “fighting the same war.”
Cuomo said that 2,382 people in the state had tested positive for the virus, an increase of more than 800 from Tuesday to Wednesday. In New York City, 1,339 people have tested positive, compared with 814 on Tuesday.
Cuomo “attributed much of the jump to an increase in testing. Nearly 5,000 state residents were tested on Tuesday alone, bringing the statewide total to 14,597, the Times said.
