U.S. aircraft carrier captain appeals for crew evacuation

The captain of an American aircraft carrier grappling with a coronavirus outbreak made an unusual appeal to the Navy to move thousands of sailors into quarantine on shore, illustrating the difficulty of containing the virus on military vessels.

In a March 30 letter first made public by the San Francisco Chronicle, Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, asked that 90 percent of the ship’s crew of more than 4,000 sailors be moved into isolation on Guam, where the ship has been since a spate of coronavirus infections emerged on his ship.

“Decisive action is required. Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure,” he wrote. “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.”

The ship, which in recent months had been conducting operations in Asia, pulled into port late last week in Guam, where infected sailors and others who had close contact with them were moved onshore for monitoring or treatment. It had previously stopped in Vietnam, though it is not clear whether sailors were infected there.

While the Navy has since announced plans to test the Roosevelt’s entire crew, Crozier said those steps would be inadequate because it would be impossible to implement isolation and distancing guidelines aboard ship.