UPDATED: Pentagon Preparing Navy Hospital Ships Mercy, Comfort for Coronavirus Response

[babylonsister]

UPDATED: Pentagon Preparing Navy Hospital Ships Mercy, Comfort for Coronavirus Response
By: Sam LaGrone
March 17, 2020 3:10 PM • Updated: March 17, 2020 4:10 PM


The Pentagon is starting the process of activating Navy hospital ships USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) and USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) as part of the Defense Department’s domestic response to the spreading COVID-19 virus, USNI News has learned.

“We’ve already given orders to the Navy… to lean forward in terms of getting them ready to deploy,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters on Tuesday.

The ships will now begin the several days-long process of bringing aboard medical staff and equipment ahead of deploying along the East and West coasts, a defense official confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday afternoon.

Two sources told USNI News that the idea was for the ships to provide relief for coastal hospital systems, with the ships taking on non-COVID-19 cases and allowing the hospitals to focus on the most critical patients suffering from the virus. The Pentagon also has extensive equipment for erecting field hospitals in addition to the hospital ships, but those facilities are optimized for trauma cases, with several beds close together, and not for infectious patients.

snip//

Each ship has a 1,000-bed capacity and is manned by military medical personnel, requiring about a week or more to mobilize those personnel from across the active duty and reserve forces. Pentagon officials have stressed that many of the reserve medical personnel that would be called up to staff mobile hospitals or Mercy and Comfort would be partially pulled from civilian medical facilities.

more...

https://news.usni.org/2020/03/17/pentagon-preparing-navy-hospital-ships-mercy-comfort-for-coronavirus-response?fbclid=IwAR1LFUQXDZGQDsyKeLGVcSha0wvygRJSZ1hru7_bj6QDhhHjAveqwdC-XH0

[Demovictory9]

1. I love the name of those ships

[duforsure]

2. How about the government utilizing Cruise ships ?

And use them in any way they need to isolate people with when not as critical. They'll be getting a bailout anyway why not use them to help lower the hospitals being overwhelmed. Hotels also should be considered and getting converted now to meet the demands of getting help when this peaks.

[mdelaguna]

3. Great idea, wow.

[babylonsister]

4. I don't

think the issue is isolation at this point. They're very concerned with people who actually have the virus and need medical attention, which the cruise ships aren't equipped to deal with.
But you'd think there is something they could do; maybe put up medical personnel who are working on those medical ships? Something!

[maxrandb]

5. Every single one of our LHDs also has the capability to be a 600 bed hospital

and that's just the LHD Class of ships.

We have 10 of those.


https://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=400&ct=4

We also have a lot of similar capabilities on the older LHA Class of ships.

Each Carrier also has large medical capabilities, including the numerous Fleet Surgical Teams.

And that is just a small part of the Navy.

This needs to be an "All Hands on Deck" moment.

[babylonsister]

6. What is an LHD?

All hands on deck needs to happen.

[maxrandb]

7. It's an Amphibious Assault Ship

Here's the Fact Sheet

Everyone gets excited about Aircraft Carriers, but the LHD is a much more capable platform.

We carried almost as many aircraft, could launch 2,000 Marines and their equipment to a beach, turn our medical facilities into a 600 bed hospital, and support NEO Ops (Non Combatant Evacuee) for thousands.

https://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=400&ct=4

[babylonsister]

8. Thanks, and whoa! Yes, we need those! nt

[maxrandb]

9. Here's a little more about these ships medical capabilities

From Wikipedia. USS WASP

Wasp has medical and dental facilities capable of providing intensive medical assistance to 600 casualties, whether combat incurred or brought aboard ship during humanitarian missions. The ship's corpsmen also provide routine medical/dental care to the crew and embarked personnel. Major medical facilities include four main and two emergency operating rooms, four dental operating rooms, x-ray rooms, a blood bank, laboratories, and patient wards. In addition, three battle dressing stations are located throughout the ship, as well as a casualty collecting area at the flight deck level. Medical elevators rapidly transfer casualties from the flight deck and hangar bay to the medical facilities.

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We have 10 of these ships. That's not counting the LHAs, LCSs, LPDs and other amphibian assault ships.

[maxrandb]

11. It's the only ship I ever served on that had a fully functional morgue

[crickets]

10. Good. K&R