The Navy hospital ships that were supposed to help relieve medical facilities of patients who have not been infected with the coronavirus are nearly empty.
The USNS Comfort, the 1,000-bed ship with a 1,200-member crew sent to New York, had only 20 patients transferred to the vessel as of Thursday evening, according to the New York Times.
The USNS Mercy, docked in Los Angeles, had about 15 patients on board, officials said.
Military protocols and bureaucratic speed bumps have prevented the Comfort from admitting patients.
The Navy is refusing to treat nearly 50 conditions, and ambulances are unable to take patients directly to the vessel. Ambulances must first bring patients to a hospital for an evaluation, including a test for COVID-19, and then deliver them to the ship.
“If I’m blunt about it, it’s a joke,” said Michael Dowling, the head of Northwell Health, New York’s largest hospital system. “Everyone can say, ‘Thank you for putting up these wonderful places and opening up these cavernous halls.’ But we’re in a crisis here, we’re in a battlefield.”
Though the ships were meant to take patients suffering from ailments other than coronavirus, there is not the usual volume of noncoronavirus patients with most New Yorkers isolating themselves in their homes, meaning there are fewer injuries that would require an emergency room visit.
If the Comfort doesn’t take patients infected with the coronavirus, Dowling said there will be few patients to send.
“It’s pretty ridiculous,” he said. “If you’re not going to help us with the people we need help with, what’s the purpose?”
At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, officials said neither ship came prepared to treat nor was given a mission to treat COVID-19 patients. Capt. Patrick Amersbach, the commanding officer of the medical personnel aboard the Comfort, said they would accept patients who tested positive if ordered.
“If our mission shifts, we do what we can to meet that mission,” he said.
