Battling an outbreak, captain of aircraft carrier asks Navy to evacuate crew

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 crowded 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% of the ship’s crew of more than 4,000 sailors be moved into isolation on Guam, where the ship has been located since a spate of coronavirus infections emerged on his ship.

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.