Warship faces dire virus threat: US Navy captain
WASHINGTON • The captain of the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt told the Pentagon that the coronavirus is spreading uncontrollably through his ship and called for immediate help to quarantine its crew.
But Defence Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday ruled out evacuating the ship, whose plight bears similarities to that on civilian cruise ships where the virus also spread.
In a four-page letter, Captain Brett Crozier wrote that they had not been able to stem the spread of Covid-19 through the crew of 4,000, describing a dire situation aboard the vessel now docked at Guam, a United States territory in the Pacific.
"We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die," Capt Crozier wrote, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published a copy of the letter on Tuesday.
"The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating," he wrote, referring to the ship's "inherent limitations of space".
The captain asked to be able to quarantine nearly the entire crew onshore at Guam, saying keeping them all on board the ship was an "unnecessary risk". There is little opportunity for "social distancing", which US civilians have been told to practise, among the cramped passageways and sleeping quarters of an aircraft carrier.
"Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed US nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure," he said. "This is a necessary risk."
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