The USNS Comfort hospital ship, the sixth-largest in the world, arrived at Pier 90 in New York on Monday to relieve the city’s hospital system. The city already has almost 60,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than a thousand deaths.
The ship has a 1,000-bed capacity, 12 operating rooms, and a morgue, among other compartments. It will not receive patients infected by the coronavirus outbreak but will serve as a hospital for patients with other pathologies or pending surgeries. The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, has come to the dock to receive the boat: “We needed this boost, we needed this hope created by our brothers and sisters in the Navy.” Despite the social distancing measures, De Blasio spoke in front of a crowd.
The Comfort has a crew of 1,200 people. The goal is for ground-based hospitals to use their intensive care units and ventilators for patients infected with the coronavirus. Extreme precautions have been taken to keep the vessel free of the coronavirus since any infection could turn the rescue ship into a dangerous source of contagion.
It is the second Mercy-class Navy hospital ship made available to this health crisis. The first, also with a capacity of 1,000 beds, has been in Los Angeles since Friday to aid hospitals in Southern California, the third state with the highest number of infections in the country, behind New York and New Jersey.
New York and California are in the top five states with the highest number of infections.
Several airlines have donated their airtime to help transport doctors to New York City to help as well with the emergency field hospital being built in Central Park for Coronavirus patients.
Help is on the way!
