Nearly 100 sailors have been sickened by COVID-19 on the Pacific carrier USS Roosevelt, which is docked in Guam, where it is removing and testing sailors at a rate of about 500 per day.
“A lot of this, we’re adjusting on the fly,” said acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly at a Pentagon press briefing Wednesday, noting that sailors are being removed and that housing is being identified for them in Guam.
“We’re making progress on that process. We already have nearly 1,000 personnel off the ship right now,” he said of the 4,800-person crew. “In the next couple of days, we expect to have about 2,700 of them off the ship.”
The press conference was the first by the Navy civilian and military leaders following the publication of a confidential letter by Roosevelt ship Capt. Brett Crozier on Sunday that called for an urgent removal of sailors with the virus spreading.
In the letter, Crozier said the contagion was “ongoing and accelerating” among his crew members, and he called for the removal of sailors at a faster pace.
Navy Surgeon General Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham explained to the media that it was unsafe to remove all sailors from the ship.
“Our goal is to get a clean ship,” he said, noting that about 1,000 sailors must remain on the ship to maintain its nuclear reactor, weapons systems, and other essential maintenance functions.
After separation, sailors are being isolated for 14 days.
The remaining 94 deployed Navy ships at sea are on now-standard 14-day at sea deployments to create a quarantine setting. No other sailors at sea have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The surgeon general said that, at first, surveillance testing had been conducted on the Roosevelt, isolating and testing sailors with symptoms, followed by diagnostic testing, where coronavirus tests were conducted and sent to a laboratory on land.
Now that the ship is docked in Guam, all sailors are being isolated and tested. The Navy has already filled available naval and other defense installations and is working with the local governor to find enough hotel space to accommodate sailors to meet isolation and distancing needs.
Naval commanders at the briefing described a timeline of a Guam port visit in January and a Vietnam port visit in February. A 14-day at sea quarantine was observed following the Vietnam visit before three sailors tested positive and were flown off the ship on March 24.
Contact tracing was conducted, and numerous sailors were isolated, then five more sailors tested positive and were flown off the ship.
At that time, the decision was made to port at Guam and to test all 4,800 sailors.
“We’re going to remove as much of the crew as we can,” said Modly, who detailed the status as 93 positive cases, with 83 symptomatic and seven asymptomatic, and 593 negative cases.
The Navy secretary said 1,273 sailors have been tested so far, about a quarter of the ship crew.
Modly said Crozier did not violate any protocol by writing a letter up his chain of command to voice his concerns, and he encouraged the transparency. Leaking that letter to the media, however, was a punishable offense.
“He submitted this letter through his chain of command,” said Modly. “I don’t know who leaked the letter to the media. That would be something that would violate the principles of good order and discipline.”
Modly and Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, said there is no way to know if asymptomatic sailors had entered the ship before it set sail in San Diego, at the two port visits, or from any of the aircraft personnel that landed and departed from the carrier while it was at sea.
“Once the virus gets on the ship, it’s going to spread,” said Modly.
