K.C. Wilsey/FEMA
The USNS Comfort arrived in New York Harbor to support the national, state and local response to the coronavirus (COVID-19)
- The 1,000-bed US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort is only treating a small number of patients in New York City, and part of the problem has been requirements and restrictions for treatment aboard the ship.
- The Department of Defense announced Friday that the USNS Comfort will no longer require a negative COVID-19 test for a patient to be treated.
- Additionally, the Navy is looking at loosening the restrictions on what type of patients can receive treatment on the ship.
- The purpose of the USNS Comfort is to relieve the pressure on the New York City hospitals and medical facilities currently overwhelmed by the coronavirus.
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The 1,000-bed US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort is only treating a small number of patients in New York City, but the military is trying to change that.
The massive hospital ship, which deployed to relieve the stress on New York's hospitals by treating patients with non-coronavirus related health issues, arrived in New York Harbor on Monday. President Donald Trump visited the ship as it was preparing to leave last Saturday.
As of Thursday, however, the USNS Comfort is treating only 20 patients - 2% of its operating capacity - according to The New York Times.
Earlier in the day on Thursday, Capt. Patrick Amersbach, the Comfort's commanding officer, told reporters that he was looking forward "to seeing a significant increase in patients being transferred to the Comfort."
"There's no question in my mind that's going to get resolved very quickly and you're going to see that number grow," Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, said Friday on CNN's "New Day."
The Department of Defense announced Friday that the patient screening process for the USNS Comfort is being streamlined and "will now occur pier-side in an effort to reduce the backlog at some nearby New York hospitals."
Patient screening will include a temperature check and a questionnaire. A negative COVID-19 test is no longer required for treatment aboard the hospital ship, DoD revealed, adding that "this assistance will further unburden the local hospital and ambulance systems in these areas, allowing them to focus on the more serious COVID-19 cases."
DoD said that these changes will take place immediately.
While the hospital ship is accepting asymptomatic patients who have been screened, these patients will be isolated and tested upon arrival, the Navy said in response to a query from Insider.
Another problem that has been preventing the ship from taking on patients is a restrictive list of 49 different ailments that would exclude an individual from receiving treatment aboard the hospital ship.
"We are fine-tuning our patient acceptance criteria in order to open the aperture and take on more patients in a timely manner," the Navy said in a statement. "We are conducting data analysis on those patients who were not previously approved in order to determine what changes we need to make in order to meet the needs of the city."
The Navy is working with local health officials "to make sure that we are able to provide the relief valve we came here to provide," according to the statement.
A Navy official said that the hospital ship will be bringing on additional patients throughout the day.
As of Friday, New York had more than 100,000 coronavirus cases. In the state, the virus has claimed just under 3,000 lives.
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