The USNS Comfort navy hospital ship is docked at Pier 90 on April 2, 2020.
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The Navy hospital ship U.S.N.S. Comfort chugged into New York City at 10 a.m. Monday to on a mission to help alleviate the surge in patients during the coronavirus outbreak, but after days of being up and running, on Thursday morning officials said in a briefing that just three patients had been admitted to the facility. The Navy said later in the day Thursday, the number transfers had risen to 20 patients. The aim of the thousand-bed vessel staffed by a 1,200-member crew was to take non-coronavirus patients to allow the city’s hospitals to use their resources to assist those suffering from the virus. So far, it isn’t working. Officials say a similar Navy hospital ship docked on the other side of the country in Los Angeles has seen a total of 15 patients.
What’s wrong? The process of admitting patients onto the Navy ship hospital in New York is cumbersome, in part, by design. In order to make the facility safe for non-coronavirus patients, each patient must test negative for the virus before being allowed onboard for treatment. That means ambulances cannot directly deliver patients to the hospital ship like they would to an emergency room at a normal hospital under normal conditions. Instead, patients first must be taken to an existing hospital for evaluation. Only then, if they test negative for the virus, can they be transported to the ship for treatment. There are a number of other hurdles, according to the New York Times, including a 49 other medical conditions that prevent a patient from admission on the Comfort.
The effort to prevent the spread of the virus on the ship is a well-intentioned one, of course, because a single case could knock out its ability to safely serve patients for a protracted period. So it makes sense to be careful. But not to the point of incapacitation. Hospital officials expressed frustration and anger to the New York Times about the ineffectiveness of the ship. The head of New York’s largest hospital system referred to the situation as “a joke.” While other city hospitals are treating people in corridors and hallways, the non-coronavirus ship hospital is lagging, in part, because the entire city is largely sitting around at home which has led to a dramatic drop in other types of injuries that might require a trip to the emergency room.
Where does that leave us? The U.S.N.S. Comfort could be repurposed to treat coronavirus patients, much like the newly erected, military-operated facility at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan has been repurposed for. Gov. Cuomo asked President Trump to change the mission of the site’s 2,500 hospital beds to treat coronavirus patients and Trump agreed Thursday night. Navy officials say the Comfort could be refitted to function as a coronavirus unit, but needs the go-ahead orders to do so. Misjudging the impact of a good faith decision can and will happen during this crisis, and isn’t a justification for having not acted at all, but leadership at all levels needs to be nimble and humble enough to course-correct. As health systems teeter, time is of the essence.
The inability of both the Navy hospital ships to jump on the moving treadmill that is the coronavirus response should serve as a reminder that grand gestures, presidential proclamations (and tweets), and easy fixes are not what’s going to make the difference. Beating back the pandemic will be mundane, incremental, and unglamorous—just like the virus.
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