All Tied Up: Hospital Ship USNS Mercy Tied Up in Maintenance, Can’t Deploy for COVID Relief

Well, that’s too bad. I’ve seen what these ships can do and the support they can provide. Wouldn’t it be nice to be utilized in the pandemic somehow? However, the article reports:

Despite worsening COVID-19 infection rates on the West Coast and discussion among local leaders in California about the state requesting a Navy hospital ship to ease the strain on area hospitals, the Navy’s West Coast hospital ship is in maintenance and unavailable for tasking for the next couple months.

There is reservation however about putting the ship in the pandemic fight now. This comes down to politics. Look what happened to the USS Comfort in New York – it was sent there, and politicians refused to utilize this awesome resource. Even the USS Mercy referenced in the article “when Mercy supported local Southern California hospitals in the early months of the pandemic, only 77 patients were ultimately treated.” So, there you have it – these awesome ships with awesome capabilities and politics tied up their usage whereby they could have provided comfort and mercy as the names of the ships imply, they were sidelined. The article reports today: 

the pandemic in Southern California is much worse, with hospitals essentially full and ambulances being told not to bring patients experiencing cardiac arrest to hospitals if emergency medical technicians can’t resuscitate them in the field. Just 1,319 intensive care unit beds are open across the entire state – with most regions having none available – and the state’s COVID positivity rate sits at 15 percent today.

However, these two awesome ships remain all tied up. 

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