US sailors will die unless coronavirus-hit aircraft carrier evacuated, captain warns

The captain of the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, in a blunt letter, has called on Navy leadership for stronger measures to save the lives of his sailors and stop the spread of the coronavirus aboard the huge ship.

(TheGuardian) -The captain of a US aircraft carrier, with 5,000 people onboard, including an unconfirmed number who have tested positive for Covid-19, has called for help to save the lives of his sailors.

The US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was in the Pacific when the navy reported its first coronavirus case a week ago. It has since pulled into port in Guam, a US island territory in the western Pacific.

A four-page letter, written by the ship’s captain, describes a bleak situation onboard the nuclear-powered carrier as more sailors test positive for the virus.

Captain Brett Crozier, the ship’s commanding officer, wrote that the carrier lacked enough quarantine and isolation facilities and warned the current strategy would slow but fail to eradicate the highly contagious respiratory virus.

In the letter dated Monday, he called for “decisive action” and removing over 4,000 sailors from the ship and isolating them. Along with the ship’s crew, naval aviators and others serve aboard the Roosevelt.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset – our sailors,” Crozier wrote.

US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that nearly 80 people aboard the ship had tested positive for the coronavirus, a number likely to increase as all personnel on the ship are tested.

Still, the navy declined to confirm exactly how many people aboard the Roosevelt had been infected. The navy puts the ship’s complement at 5,000, the equivalent of a small American town.

The letter was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and its contents have been confirmed by US officials to Reuters.

The letter does not say where the sailors would be evacuated to and did say that there would be “challenges” in securing individual accommodation for his crew to safely quarantine themselves for 14 days. The island of Guam, where the carrier is docked, is the hotspot of Covid-19 in the Pacific region and is struggling to deal with the caseload it has.

Guam has 58 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and has had two Covid-19-related deaths. The Pacific Daily News reports that local authorities have been promised more testing kits by the US government and are sourcing others from Asia, but there are fears the island is fast approaching capacity in its hospitals and deaths could increase.

Acting US navy secretary Thomas Modly said the navy had been working for several days to get the sailors off the ship in Guam. Modly said Guam did not have enough beds and the Navy was in talks with the local government to use hotels and set up tents.

“We don’t disagree with the [commanding officer] on that ship, and we’re doing it in a very methodical way because it’s not the same as a cruise ship … that ship has armaments on it, it has aircraft on it,” he said on CNN.

US defense secretary Mark Esper said on Tuesday it was not time to evacuate the carrier, adding he had not read the letter in detail.

Admiral John Aquilino, head of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, told reporters that the plan was to take some sailors off the ship, test and quarantine them, clean the ship and then rotate them with those on the carrier.

He said that there would be some sailors who would be in quarantine and isolation on the vessel. Asked if he was following what the ship’s captain wanted to do, but was not able to do it at the pace the commanding officer wanted, Aquilino said: “That is absolutely the case.”