The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier is requesting aid from the U.S. Navy to contain an outbreak of the coronavirus on board his ship.
Capt. Brett Crozier has docked his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, in Guam after cases of the virus that originated in China last year began appearing on his ship. Among a crew of roughly 4,000, more than 100 sailors have tested positive for the pathogen.
Crozier sent a four-page letter to Navy officials on Monday, pleading for aid for the sailors before the disease spreads and worsens, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The carrier captain said his crew has not abided by federal guidelines that recommend social distancing between people and isolating potential carriers of the COVID-19 virus for two weeks.
“Due to a warship’s inherent limitations of space, we are not doing this,” Crozier wrote. “The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.”
The captain asked the Navy for support and approval to remove about 90% of the crew from the carrier to quarantine them for two weeks. The 10% left on board would maintain the ship’s nuclear reactor and sanitize the entire craft to prepare it for the return of the crew. Only then can the ship return to normal combat operations.
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier said. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said on Tuesday that the Navy had been working for about a week to clear the ship of most of its crew to sanitize the carrier.
“The problem is that Guam doesn’t have enough beds right now and we’re having to talk to the government there to see if we can get some hotel space, create tent-type facilities,” Modly said.
“We’re doing it in a very methodical way because it’s not the same as a cruise ship, that ship has armaments on it, it has aircraft on it, we have to be able to fight fires if there are fires on board the ship, we have to run a nuclear power plant, so there’s a lot of things that we have to do on that ship that make it a little bit different and unique but we’re managing it and we’re working through it,” Modley said.
