President Trump said Tuesday that the naval ship Comfort sent to New York to provide overflow capacity for hospitals treating COVID-19 patients will sail back to Virginia.
“I’ve asked [Gov. Andrew Cuomo] if we could bring the Comfort back to its base in Virginia so that we can have it for other locations, and he said we would be able to do that,” Trump said at the White House press briefing Tuesday.
Along with the temporary hospital set up at the Javits Center in New York, the Comfort was set up to hold about 2,500 additional patients that hospitals could not care for while treating the thousands of patients sick with COVID-19.
“The Javits Center has been a great help to them, but we’ll be bringing the ship back at the earliest time, and we’ll get it ready for its next mission,” Trump said.
He did not offer further details about the ship’s next destination. New York’s hospitalization rates have begun to stabilize. Other states might need the ship’s capacity to help offset the number of new patients straining healthcare systems. Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, states that would be possible to reach by ship, have recently experienced severe outbreaks, with combined cases surpassing 72,000.
