General says coronavirus likely to affect more Navy ships

Pentagon leaders anticipate that the coronavirus is likely to strike more Navy ships at sea after an outbreak aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific infected more than 400 sailors, a top general said Thursday.

Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said one member of the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt was hospitalized Thursday in intensive care on Guam, where the carrier has been docked for more than a week. He said 416 crew members are now infected and that hundreds of test results are pending.

“It’s not a good idea to think that the Teddy Roosevelt is a one-of-a-kind issue,” Hyten told a Pentagon news conference. “We have too many ships at sea. ... To think that it will never happen again is not a good way to plan.”

He said the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier in port at Bremerton, Washington, preparing for a Pacific deployment, has an unspecified number of crew members who have the virus.

“There’s been a very small number of breakouts on the Nimitz, and we’re watching that very closely before the Nimitz goes out,” he said. “But it’s not a huge breakout, it’s not a big spike at this point.”

More broadly, Hyten said the outbreak aboard the Roosevelt is an illustration that the military has to adapt.

“This will be a new way of doing business that we have to focus in on,” he said, referring to the challenge of recruiting, training, deploying and potentially conducting combat amid the pandemic. “We’re adjusting to that new world as we speak today.”

The outbreak aboard the Roosevelt began in late March and has thrust the Navy into a leadership crisis. Thomas Modly, who resigned Tuesday as acting Navy secretary, had fired the commander of the Roosevelt, Capt. Brett E. Crozier, for having widely distributed a letter urging faster action by the Navy to save his sailors.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.

(Image Credit: AP)