Skip to main content

New story in Health from Time: Second Navy Warship Reports Coronavirus Outbreak While at Sea



(WASHINGTON) — Another Navy ship at sea has reported a coronavirus outbreak and is returning to port, the Navy said Friday.

Navy officials said at least 18 members of the crew of a destroyer, the USS Kidd, have tested positive and it expects the number to grow. It said it is evaluating the extent of the outbreak aboard the ship.

The Kidd is off the Pacific coast of Central America, where it has been operating as part of a U.S. counter-drug mission. The Navy said it has a crew of about 350. It is only the second Navy ship, among about 90 deployed around the world, to report a coronavirus outbreak at sea. The other is the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Read more: Coronavirus Has Hit the U.S. Military, and America’s Adversaries Are Seeking Advantage

One sailor who displayed symptoms was flown off the Kidd on Thursday to a medical facility at San Antonio, where he tested positive for the virus.

After the positive case was confirmed at San Antonio, the Navy deployed a specialized medical team to the ship to conduct contact tracing and additional onsite testing.

“The first patient transported is already improving and will self-isolate. We are taking every precaution to ensure we identify, isolate, and prevent any further spread onboard the ship,” said Rear Admiral Don Gabrielson, commander U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and U.S. 4th Fleet. “Our medical team continues coordinating with the ship and our focus is the safety and well-being of every Sailor.”

The Navy said the ship will return to port, where the crew will continue to clean and disinfect the ship, observing protocols in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Navy-specific guidelines.

The Navy continues to struggle with a coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier that is docked in Guam and has more than 800 confirmed virus cases.

Asked whether the Pentagon fears that the Kidd may become another Roosevelt crisis, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, said the Navy acted quickly once learning of the first symptomatic sailor aboard the Kidd.

“The Navy has lessons learned from prior experience with a COVID crisis, and they have been quickly applying those to this case,” Hoffman said. “Fingers crossed, the Navy is doing everything they can right now, and we’re going to hope for the best outcome, but they are going to take all of the prudent steps that they possibly can.”

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: Here’s How Quickly Coronavirus Is Spreading in Your State

The novel coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis, a national emergency and a local nightmare. But while a great deal of the focus in the U.S. has been on the federal government’s response, widely criticized as slow and halting , the picture on the ground remains very different in different parts of the country. A TIME analysis of the per capita spread of the epidemic in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. found considerable range in the rate of contagion, and, in some parts of the country, a significant disparity compared to the national figure. The U.S., unlike nations such as South Korea and now Italy , has yet to show signs of bringing the runaway spread of the virus under control. However, while no single state is yet showing strong signs of bending the curve , some are faring much worse than others. The following graphic plots the rise in the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in each state, plotted by the day that each state reported its first case.
Read more

New story in Health from Time: We Need to Take Care of the Growing Number of Long-term COVID-19 Patients

On July 7, 2020, the Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez tested positive for the new coronavirus. He was scheduled to start Opening Day for the Sox, but the virus had other plans— damaging Rodriguez’s heart and causing a condition called myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). Now the previously fit 27-year old ace left-hander must sit out the 2020 season to recover. Rodriguez is not alone in having heart damage from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In a new study done in Germany, researchers studied the hearts of 100 patients who had recently recovered from COVID-19. The findings were alarming: 78 patients had heart abnormalities, as shown by a special kind of imaging test that shows the heart’s structure (a cardiac MRI), and 60 had myocarditis. These patients were mostly young and previously healthy . Several had just returned from ski trips. While other studies have shown a lower rate of heart problems—for example, a study of 416 patients hosp
Read more

New story in Health from Time: U.S. Inmates ‘Mistakenly’ Received COVID-19 Stimulus Checks. Now, the IRS Wants That Money Back

(BOISE, Idaho) — Hundreds of thousands of dollars in coronavirus relief payments have been sent to people incarcerated across the United States, and now the IRS is asking state officials to help claw back the cash that the federal tax agency says was mistakenly sent. The legislation authorizing the payments during the pandemic doesn’t specifically exclude jail or prison inmates, and the IRS has refused to say exactly what legal authority it has to retrieve the money. On its website, it points to the unrelated Social Security Act, which bars incarcerated people from receiving some types of old-age and survivor insurance benefit payments. “I can’t give you the legal basis. All I can tell you is this is the language the Treasury and ourselves have been using,” IRS spokesman Eric Smith said. “It’s just the same list as in the Social Security Act.” Read more: ‘A Double Whammy.’ Those Who Most Need The $1,200 Stimulus Checks May Wait the Longest To Get Them Tax attorney Kell
Read more