NORFOLK, Va. — The crew of USNS Comfort is back in Hampton Roads. The Navy hospital ship officially pulled into Naval Station Norfolk this morning after providing care to COVID-19 patients in New York City.
It was a month-long mission where the crew had to quickly adapt.
“We all know that we went up to NYC to take care of COVID negative patients, very quickly it was asked of the Comfort and the team up there, that the need was to take care of COVID positive patients,” Captain Patrick Amersbach said pierside.
The USNS Comfort treated more than 180 patients. Captain Amersbach said 70 per cent of the people his crew treated were COVID-19 positive.
“We saw everything that the city saw. We saw very complex, intubated patients, we saw multi-system organ failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome – whatever they had, we had as well,” he said.
The Comfort has nearly one thousand two hundred crew members on board.
Captain Joseph O’Brien said medical teams tested everyone for coronavirus, yesterday.
“We don’t have anybody who’s symptomatic, we don’t have anyone who has any indications of COVID. Regardless, we tested everybody,” O’Brien said
And beginning today – everyone will head into quarantine.
“We’re also following the CDC guidelines to remain in place and quarantine, so all of the sailors who are leaving the ship will go to a quarantine location for 14 days in accordance with CDC,” O'Brien told us.
O’Brien and Amersbach said they’re proud of the care their crew provided to patients in New York, one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak.
“What they’ve done is something that is heroic on a level that I have not seen in my entire career. These were the sickest patients," said Amersbach. "We all watch the news, we all saw what was going on and the fears associated with taking care of COVID positive patients. They did it in a very professional and compassionate manner.”
The Comfort left New York on Thursday, just ahead of an announcement by New York’s governor that the number of daily hospitalizations there has fallen to its lowest point in more than a month.