The USNS Comfort ship, the sixth largest in the world, will serve to alleviate the incipient coronavirus collapse in the American city. ...
The USNS Comfort ship, the sixth largest in the world, will serve to alleviate the incipient coronavirus collapse in the American city.
The USNS Comfort hospital ship, the sixth largest in the world, has arrived at Pier 90 in New York on Monday to relieve the city's hospital system, where there are already almost 60,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and more than a thousand deaths.The ship has a 1,000-bed capacity, 12 operating rooms and a morgue, among other compartments. You will not receive patients infected by the coronavirus outbreak, but will serve as a hospital for patients with other pathologies or pending operations. The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, has come to the dock to receive the boat: "We needed this boost, we needed this hope created by our brothers and sisters in the Navy," he said to a crowd of people who were not respected. the recommended social distance.
President Donald Trump acknowledged this Sunday at the White House that he would have loved to go receive the hospital ship, but those responsible for his security prevented him from doing so "for the right reasons." What the president did achieve was fire the crew, which sailed this Saturday from Norfolk, Virginia. Governor Andrew Cuomo thanked the Administration for sending the USNS Comfort on Monday. “From the beginning we knew that hospital capacity was critical. We asked, and the federal government responded, ”he wrote on Twitter.
The Comfort has a crew of 1,200 people. The goal is for ground-based hospitals to use their intensive care units and ventilators for patients infected with the coronavirus. In the last day, 253 people have died in New York State. It is not the first time that the oil tanker converted into a hospital has provided its services to the city: after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was used as a floating base for rescue teams. Commanding Navy officers are aware of the risk of the operation, and extreme precautions have been taken to keep the vessel free of the coronavirus, since any infection could turn the rescue ship into a dangerous source of contagion.
It is the second Mercy-class Navy hospital ship made available to this health crisis. The first, also with a capacity of 1,000 beds, has been in Los Angeles since Friday to attend hospitals in southern California, the third state with the most infections in the country, behind New York and New Jersey. The ship has more than 800 members of the Navy medical and support personnel, and more than 70 civil service sailors. Its initial destination was Seattle, the first outbreak of infections in the country, which already registers 143,667 cases and 2,487 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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