The two navy hospital ships that have been sent to NY and LA are not there to treat coronavirus patients, but rather other patients that the coronavirus has displaced from hospitals. OK, fine, we still need to treat other problems while the pandemic rages and if they can be sent to a separate facility, all the better.
But apparently, they have other restrictions than just not seeing coronavirus sufferers. And because of that, they are hardly being used. There are reportedly 49 other things they won’t treat. Anyone have an idea what those 49 things are?
According to this article: "We’re not doing obstetric care and we’re not doing pediatric care.”
There are other limitations. They can’t do open-heart or bypass surgery and can’t treat patients undergoing chemotherapy, “but we can do most other things here,” he added."
I read another article that said that they aren’t taking patients who are immunosuppressed.
The biggest problem seemed to be that until today, they did not accept any patient who had not tested negative for coronavirus. That meant that trauma patients and others who had no evidence of respiratory symptoms were refused until they had been tested.
However, testing is slow; the most common test takes five or six hours to run, but only the very largest hospitals have an onsite facility to do the testing, and they are prioritizing people who have symptoms consistent with coronavirus. (cite). A patient presenting in the ER who has another problem but isn’t symptomatic for COVID-19 might have to wait days for the test results to prove they were negative and hence eligible to be treated on the USNS Comfort, by which time they’d already received treatment at the original (overloaded) hospital for whatever ailed them.
What a waste. Jeez.
Of course there is the new 15 minute test. I suppose they’ll get that about Sept. or so. :smack: