Victims of coronavirus were held aboard the USNS Comfort on Friday despite federal officials saying that the Navy hospital ship was exclusively meant to house non-coronavirus patients.
The patients transferred to the Comfort, which is docked in Manhattan, had previously not received COVID-19 tests on Friday, Navy spokesperson Beth Baker said, and are currently “isolated” on the vessel while they await the results of tests they received on board, explaining that the test results take 24 hours to receive.
“While admitting patients who were transferred to USNS Comfort for treatment, a few patients tested positive for COVID-19”, Baker said in a statement.
Until now, the Comfort had not accepted any more patients due to bureaucracy and military customs, according to the New York Times.
Naval guidelines to New York hospitals included up to 49 medical conditions which would deny a patient being stationed on the ship, according to the Times.
“Since arrival, the hospital ship has worked closely with city and local health officials for non- COVID-19 patient referrals that arrive by ambulance from either local hospitals or the Javits Federal Medical Station”, a Navy spokesperson said.
“We will continue to coordinate hospital-to-hospital transfer of patients to USNS Comfort”, the spokesperson added.
The Pentagon loosened the restrictions for the screening process on Friday to ensure that patients would be treated on the Comfort, in order to reduce the pressure on overwhelmed New York hospitals amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the renewed system, patients no longer have to be confirmed negative for Covid-19 before boarding.
The screening process now only requires a pier-side temperature check and a health survey, Pentagon officials said on Friday.
The Comfort and its twin ship 'the Mercy' have been renovated into the largest hospital ships in the world, with a 1,000-bed hospital bed capacity, and are both nearly three football fields in length and 10 stories high.
Both ships are now fully equipped with 12 operating rooms, a medical laboratory, a blood bank, a pharmacy, an optometry lab, and a CT scanner. The ships also contain 80 ICU beds, 15 patient wards, and 10 elevators to transfer patients between decks.
Coronavirus cases in New York state reached above 100,000 on Friday, with 102,863 people confirmed with the disease and the state's death toll rising to 2,935.