WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he had ordered the Navy hospital ships Mercy and Comfort to help states impacted by the coronavirus and the military to prepare to deploy field hospitals to help hospitals struggling with treating more patients.
"We are sending upon request the two hospital ships," Trump told reporters at the White House. "They can be launched in the next week or so, depending on need."
It will likely be days, and perhaps weeks, before both military hospital ships are able to relieve some of the medical strain on states hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, the Navy said.
The U.S. Naval Ship Comfort, a massive hospital ship that can treat as many as 1,000 patients a day, is likely weeks away from being able to deploy. The ship returned to its home port in Norfolk, Va., from an 11-week deployment through Central America and South America in November, and is still undergoing maintenance, a Navy official said on condition of anonymity.
In addition, military doctors and medical personnel to staff the ship still have to be called up to deploy, the official said.
Hospital ship Mercy is based in San Diego and is days away from being able to deploy, the Navy official said. It will remain on the West Coast to assist states there with their medical needs, the official said.
Military units capable of constructing and supporting field hospitals have also been told to be prepared to deploy as needed, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at the White House news briefing.
"We have also alerted a number of field and expeditionary hospitals to be prepared to deploy," Esper said.
Joint Staff surgeon Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Friedrichs said the Defense Department had put enough active duty military medical units on alert to be able to provide care for more than 1,000 field hospital beds. Friedrichs did not say exactly how many units had been alerted or specify which units had been put on alert.
A number of governors have reached out to Esper asking about the military's field hospital capacity, Pentagon chief spokesman Johnathan Hoffman said without identifying the states.
Much like the tented military field hospitals the Defense Department may support, the Navy's hospital ships are not geared for treating infectious diseases, but instead focus on trauma care or other routine medical care, such as dental visits.
In both field hospitals and the ships, patient bays are placed close together, which reduces their ability to treat infectious diseases, Esper told reporters on Tuesday. Instead, the military facilities would be used to reduce the strain on medical centers by treating other ailments so that local hospitals can focus on treating coronavirus patients.
"The Comfort and Mercy will not deploy to treat COVID patients, but will be made available to assist with the treatment of other patients," the Navy said in a statement.
The military is preparing to assist the public even as it tries to reduce cases of coronavirus within the services. As of Wednesday, there were 49 military, 14 defense civilian employees, 19 dependents, such as children or spouses, and seven contractors diagnosed with the virus.
The ships are part of a large governmentwide approach that now includes the Department of Defense releasing up to 2,000 ventilators and up to 5 million respiratory masks to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Air Force is offering to use its cargo aircraft to move coronavirus testing kits to areas that need them, including a shipment of 500,000 medical swabs that were delivered last night in Memphis, Tenn., Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is also taking part in addressing potential medical shortages, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said at the White House news briefing. The VA has 13,000 acute care beds and 1,800 intensive care unit beds, the agency told McClatchy.
The agency reported that 44 veterans have coronavirus, and one has died, Wilkie said.
