A second Pacific Navy vessel will return to port soon after at least 18 sailors aboard tested positive for COVID-19, the Navy said.
A sailor from the destroyer USS Kidd was medically evacuated from the ship Thursday after he began exhibiting symptoms. A medical response team was flown to the deck within 24 hours and began conducting contact tracing and isolation of other sailors, said Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman at a briefing Friday.
“They are preparing to return to port, where they will undertake efforts to clean the ship,” he said. “They will remove a portion of the crew from the ship and work to get everybody back to health and get the ship back to sea.”
The eight-person team identified an additional 17 coronavirus-positive cases, with more expected to come, the Navy said in a statement.
The first infected sailor is currently recovering at a medical treatment facility in San Antonio.
The Pacific carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was struck by a widespread and fast-moving coronavirus contagion in March that has already affected more than 800 sailors and led to the vessel’s porting and disembarking 4,234 sailors in Guam.
An investigation into the handling of the contagion aboard the carrier and the role of the ship’s since-dismissed commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, will be briefed to Defense Secretary Mark Esper today, Hoffman confirmed.
Crozier was dismissed by former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly for allegedly going outside his chain of command to send a letter to Navy officers warning about the coronavirus contagion, which was then leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. Modly later resigned over the incident.
Hoffman said Esper will enter the briefing “with an open mind,” noting that the defense secretary is “generally inclined to support Navy leadership in their decisions.”
The Navy said it is using lessons learned from the Roosevelt ordeal to respond quickly to the Kidd crisis.
In recent weeks, Pentagon leadership has discussed returning the military to a “new normal” where it is able to conduct operations globally in an environment affected by the coronavirus.
The Kidd’s return to port demonstrates that personnel health still comes first in times of peace.
Meanwhile, no departure date has been confirmed yet for the Roosevelt.
“The timeline has shifted,” said Hoffman, noting that additional asymptomatic Roosevelt patients have tested positive. “The hope from the Navy’s perspective, and from the department’s perspective, is we would rather take a little bit more time on the front end to get to a place where we have more confidence that the crew is safe, and that the virus is no longer on the ship, than be in a position, a month from now, where we’re dealing with a second wave.”
