Coronavirus patients are not treated on the USNS Comfort. Other patients can be transferred to the ship to give the hospitals more capacity for coronavirus patients.
The state of New York and the city of the same name are particularly hard hit by the pandemic. More than 60,000 cases of infection have been confirmed there – that is almost half of all infections nationwide. The hospitals in New York are increasingly overloaded. Several temporary hospitals are therefore being set up in the state to create more capacity.
It’s a race against time: the pandemic is expected to peak in about two to three weeks. The hospital ship USNS Mercy had already reached the Californian city of Los Angeles on the US west coast last week.
The United States is now the country with the most confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide. More than 143,000 infections and more than 2,500 deaths have been reported from the country. The numbers are likely to increase dramatically. US President Donald Trump himself described 100,000 to 200,000 dead on Sunday as a possible magnitude.
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