The USNS Comfort Navy warship has been sent by President Donald Trump as a Navy hospital ship to New York City yesterday with a motive to facilitate more medical beds and help hospitals which are overburdened by coronavirus patients. Currently, the US has 1,23,700 positive cases, leading among all the infected nations. With this idea of warship converting into a hospital, it will help to increase health care efforts in New York as the city has more than 52,000 Covid-19 cases with 728 people dead.
The severity of New York’s Covid-19 outbreak made Trump announced that quarantine measures will not be applied to people passing from New York to neighbouring states like New Jersey and Connecticut. As of March 28, New Jersey has about 8,800, and Connecticut has about 1,300 cases. It is also estimated that the states will continue to see increases in confirmed cases for the next three weeks. But, due to the heavy shortage of hospital beds, the Comfort will provide emergency care for those with non-Covid-19-related illnesses in order to open up ICU beds for people infected with the coronavirus.
“We are here for you, we are fighting for you, and we are with you all the way and we always will be,” Trump said, addressing New Yorkers. The president also assured that the USNS Mercy Navy ship was deployed on the West Coast to support Los Angeles residents, offering 1,000 medical beds, a medical lab and a pharmacy. Currently, the US is badly in need of hospital beds with the rapid increase of the infection and doctors have also faced a growing shortage of emergency equipment, such as face masks and ventilators.
The citizens have solely been dependent on the vaccine to come, which will take at least 18 months to be available in the market. Though the Comfort and Mercy ships won’t solve this issue all by itself, it will certainly help in California and New York. The president had earlier touted the four field hospitals the US Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA have built in New York, California, Illinois and the situation may repeat sooner.
