U.S.N.S. Mercy Navy hospital ship has been at the Port of Los Angeles and treated 31 patients in its first 12 days

See A Dispatch From the U.S.N.S. Mercy by Jill Cowan and John Ismay of The Ny Times. Excerpt:

"On March 27, the Mercy, a massive floating hospital, arrived at the Port of Los Angeles from San Diego as a kind of relief valve for the region’s hospitals ahead of what experts have warned are likely to be surging numbers of Covid-19 patients.

My colleague John Ismay and I have been in regular contact with leaders onboard, and we plan to keep you updated about how things are going. Here’s our dispatch:

The U.S. Navy hospital ship now pierside at the cruise ship terminal in San Pedro was built to care for casualties of war.

But here in California, its crew hasn’t been treating troops evacuated from the battlefield with gunshot wounds and blast injuries. Instead, they’ve treated a range of maladies more common in a giant American metropolis.

Since the Mercy arrived, the crew have treated 31 patients total and released 18 of them, as of noon on Wednesday.

Surgeons onboard have performed five operations, including repairing an obstructed bowel, removing a ruptured appendix and an inflamed gallbladder, and treating an abdominal stab wound.

Still, there are some types of patients the ship isn’t taking on.

For now, patients are required to have negative coronavirus tests before they can be brought to the Mercy — although ensuring that the ship remains infection-free is a challenge, as it is for any civilian hospital.

Late on Wednesday, officials aboard the Mercy confirmed in an emailed statement that a crew member on board tested positive for the coronavirus."