Sailors pulled off stricken aircraft carrier
U.S. Navy gets 93 positive tests so far as quarantine operation begins in earnest at Guam for ship with crew of nearly 5,000.
The U.S. Navy removed more sailors Wednesday from the nuclear aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt docked in Guam amid a coronavirus outbreak, and officials said about a quarter of the crew had been tested for COVID19.
Of nearly 1,300 who have been screened for the disease, 93 tested positive, Navy officials said Wednesday, but about half the tests have not been returned. About 1,000 sailors, or 20%, had been removed from the ship, Navy officials said. In the next 48 hours, they said, they hope to pull a total of 2,700 crew members off the infected ship.
In Washington, lawmakers pressed the Navy for answers on the situation — and warned that more outbreaks could quickly spiral out of control without proper preparedness.
Navy officials divulged the numbers from the outbreak at a news conference Wednesday, the first detailed data to come from the deteriorating situation since the ship’s captain took the unusual step of writing Navy command pleading for immediate assistance to an exploding coronavirus outbreak. The letter from Capt. Brett Crozier, a Santa Rosa native, obtained exclusively by The Chronicle, has sent waves through the military community and garnered praise from sailors and their families concerned about their welfare on a warship where it’s not possible to socially distance.
Due to a lack of quarantine facilities on the base that would sufficiently isolate the sailors, top Navy officials Wednesday said they worked with the governor of Guam to find about 3,000 rooms, mostly at local hotels.
“We continue to work with the government of Guam and a local community to find additional spaces for these sailors to stay, particularly in hotel rooms,” said Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of Naval Operations. “So our goal is to get a clean ship, right. We need about 1,000 people or so on that ship to keep those critical functions running.”
Crozier, in his blunt letter to Navy command Monday, asked for just 10% of his 4,865 sailors, or about 500 crew, to remain on board to monitor the ship’s two nuclear reactors, weapons and aircraft and to maintain mission readiness. He wanted the rest of the crew off the ship, otherwise he warned the virus would continue to rapidly spread and sailors could lose their lives.
However, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said he did not think that 10% was enough, and they would need to leave about 1,000 sailors on board. The crew isolating in Guam would stay for 14 days, get tested for COVID19 and, if healthy, replace those on the ship, who would then do their own quarantine.
Modly said a little more than half of the 1,273 tests administered to Roosevelt sailors have been returned. Ninetythree tested positive — seven showing no signs of illness and the others with mild symptoms — and 593 tested negative. Almost 700 tests had not been returned yet, and more than 3,500 sailors had yet to be tested.
A sailor told The Chronicle tests were being sent to a South Korea lab.
At the news conference, Modly provided the most detailed timeline yet of events since the carrier docked in Vietnam last month.
After the first two positive cases were identified and flown out to a Guam hospital last week, the secretary said the ship identified and quarantined all those suspected of being in close contacts with the pair. When they docked, all infected sailors were moved off the ship and isolated, and the crew continued to track contacts, quarantine and monitor to find potential cases.
The captain said in his letter — and sailors have told The Chronicle — it is impossible to quarantine and isolate crew on the ship and even in the group quarantines ashore.
On Sunday, the captain and medical team expressed concerns about the pace of isolations and lack of proper space off the ship, Modly said.
“Let me emphasize that this is exactly what we want our commanding officers, our medical teams to do,” Modly said. “We need a lot of transparency in this process, and we want that information to flow up through the chain of command.”
He said his chief of staff had been in communication with the captain prior to The Chronicle exposing the letter and publishing it in full. Gilday called it a “communications breakdown.”
The Navy, with its tight and cramped quarters aboard warships, presents a particular vulnerability to the spread of coronavirus. But Modly said the Roosevelt is the only one of 94 ships deployed that has an active case.
“Some of the other ships that we have that have some active cases on it are in port, not deployed ships,” he said. “And those numbers are all in the single digits. We don’t have any large outbreaks on any of the other ships that we have right now.”
The Navy has begun to cancel some port visits, exercises and trainings out of precaution, the officials said.
Meanwhile, more than two dozen Democratic members of the House wrote a letter to the Navy secretary and chief of Naval operations on Wednesday lamenting that it took reporting like The Chronicle’s to get the Navy to begin rotating sailors off the Roosevelt. The group — which included Reps. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), Jared Huffman of San Rafael, Navy Reserves veteran Jimmy Panetta of Carmel Valley and Jackie Speier of San Mateo — demanded information on how the Navy would prevent similar incidents.
“Shipboard life, with limited space for social distancing or quarantine, presents unique challenges that exacerbate the infection rate of this virus,” the group wrote. “Unfortunately, we are concerned that current guidance from the Department of Defense has allowed for inconsistent response to the spread of the virus on our ships and submarines. With further spread of the virus expected in the coming weeks, it is critical that the Navy, like our states and communities across the nation, take additional steps now to prepare.”
In the Senate, Virginia Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine sent a similar letter Wednesday with detailed questions about the service’s preparedness for further outbreaks, including how many coronavirus tests the Navy has and whether it possesses enough barge space to house crew members for vessels that need decontamination.
In a Facebook Live with constituents Wednesday, Huffman said two sailors from his district are aboard the Roosevelt and he and others are pressing the Pentagon to be “more forthcoming” with information.
“What you’re hearing about in the media is one aircraft carrier, but we have 70 naval vessels under way around the world, and it is very foreseeable and almost certain that we’re going to have COVID19 outbreaks in many of these ships,” Huffman said. “So we have got to be far more proactive.”
Speier chairs the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel and has requested to speak directly with Capt. Crozier. The Pentagon has yet to comply with that request, her office said.
Speier spoke with U.S. Pacific Fleet Adm. John Aquilino on Tuesday and was concerned the military was more focused on protocol than fully responding to the pandemic.
“I’m very concerned about the entire population of service members — they all are in close quarters,” Speier told The Chronicle on Wednesday. “It’s a powder keg. If we don’t get this right, we are going to have dead service people.”
Members of the House Armed Services Committee held a call with the Department of Defense on Wednesday, as well, but details about what was discussed were not immediately available.