By Jill Cowan and
Good morning.
On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state was working to gather demographic information about coronavirus patients. Although he cautioned that the data was incomplete, infections and deaths so far roughly aligned with the state’s racial and ethnic makeup overall.
State data also showed that health care workers were at risk; they made up roughly 10 percent of confirmed cases as of Tuesday.
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An update from the Mercy
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.
The crew member had not been in contact with patients, the statement said, and while they were currently isolated on the ship, they would soon be transferred to an off-ship isolation facility, where they’ll self-monitor for severe symptoms.
[See all the confirmed coronavirus cases in California by county.]
Other crew members who came in contact with the crew member who tested positive will also be isolated off the ship and their conditions will be monitored, including with daily temperature checks.
“This will not affect the ability for Mercy to receive patients,” the statement said. “The ship is following protocols and taking every precaution to ensure the health and safety of all crew members and patients on board.”
Capt. John Rotruck, commander of the medical team aboard Mercy, told us on Tuesday that patients were tested at the hospitals that refer them, but that the Mercy had the capacity to conduct 60 tests per day and get results in about an hour.
After careful consideration, senior Navy doctors decided the best thing they could do would be to offer care to adults.
Given the space limitations on a ship, types of care requiring specialized equipment — like pediatrics, obstetrics and treating behavioral disorders — won’t be offered onboard.
The Mercy’s mission is largely precautionary so far, given that Los Angeles has yet to see the numbers of Covid-19 patients that New York City has.
According to Navy officials, hospitals in L.A. County that are normally about 97 percent full have only about 60 percent of their beds taken with patients right now — partly because elective and nonemergency procedures are being deferred.
“I think they’ve sent patients to us to test the system,” said Captain Rotruck.
He said the 1,000-bed ship stood ready to take more patients as needed.
“We are at least well positioned to respond to whatever demand signal we get from the local hospitals,” Captain Rotruck added.
The gradual stream of patients is an intentional act to test the system in place, where the county’s Medical Alert Center evaluates requests from local hospitals to transfer patients to the Mercy, and contacts the ship when it determines it has a good candidate for care there.
Should the number of Covid-19 patients rise, filling beds in area hospitals, the relationship between the Medical Alert Center and the Mercy will have already worked out how to handle the load.
And if need be, the Mercy may be ordered to shift to treating only patients infected with coronavirus.
That was recently the case for the Norfolk, Va.-based Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that is now in New York City. Its mission is similar, but the Comfort’s crew is working under much different circumstances.
[Read more about the Comfort and its mission in New York.]
New York’s hospitals have been overwhelmed — a fate California leaders have said repeatedly they are working hard to head off, by opening alternate care sites at convention centers and arenas, and by calling upon the Mercy.
Such a mission would most likely be the biggest of the ship’s three-decade-long career.
Normally, the Mercy is tied up at a Navy base in San Diego with a small full-time crew of civilian mariners. Only when it is activated for humanitarian missions does the Navy send a large contingent of active-duty doctors, nurses and other sailors to the ship.
In San Pedro now, the Mercy sits next to the Iowa, another old vessel at the opposite end of the hospital ship’s mission — the former for treating the wounded, and the latter for blasting targets at sea and on land in combat.
The Iowa is a relic — a type of warship this country has not built in more than 70 years, now serving as a floating museum.
Painted haze-gray, it bristles with gun barrels and is armored with thick steel plates.
The Mercy, on the other hand, is a converted oil tanker built in 1976 and recommissioned as a hospital ship in 1986, painted bright white with thick red crosses along its length to show potential enemies that it is protected by the Geneva Convention as a noncombatant ship.
“I could not be more proud of the men and women onboard this ship,” Captain Rotruck said. “Standing up a 1,000-bed hospital in short order — no other crew other than the men and women of the U.S. Navy could have done this.”
[John Ismay is a staff writer who covers armed conflict for The New York Times Magazine. He is based in Washington. Read more of his work here.]
Here’s what else to read
We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.
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“Eventually the moratoriums will be lifted, and we don’t want to create an environment where low-income renters fall off a financial cliff.” Tenants around the nation aren’t paying rent this month. And it’s set to get worse. [The New York Times]
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At first, the coronavirus spread slowly in rural areas. That’s not the case anymore. [The New York Times]
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The story of Passover has always been one of perseverance. During a literal plague, the ritual looked different for families at Seders around the country on Wednesday night, but they still reflected. [The New York Times]
California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
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