Guam Responds to US Carrier's Plea for Help

'We can protect Guam while being humane to them,' says Guam's governor
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 1, 2020 4:00 PM CDT
Guam Responds to US Carrier's Plea for Help
In this April 13, 2018, file photo the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier is anchored off Manila Bay west of Manila, Philippines.   (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File)

Sailors from the USS Theodore Roosevelt are finally putting legs on land, the BBC reports. With at least 100 testing positive for the coronavirus—and the vessel's captain issuing a plea for help—US officials have arranged for crew members to be quarantined in Guam, where the aircraft carrier has been docked since Friday. "We are not at war," Capt. Brett Crozier wrote in a letter published by the San Francisco Chronicle. "Sailors do not need to die." Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly tells MSNBC that 1,000 sailors are now on land and "more and more" are going ashore for medical care. Some will stay on board to keep the Theodore Roosevelt up and running.

"We can protect Guam while being humane to them," Guam's governor, Lou Leon Guerrero, tells the Pacific Daily News. "That is the Guam I know, and we will not abandon who we are out of fear." CNN reports that some sailors will be quarantined in hotels under military security, while others remain on base; US Adm. John Aquilino says none have been hospitalized or need ventilators or ICU treatment. "Once those sailors are quarantined, isolated and re-tested, when they are COVID-free, the plan will be to rotate them back onto the ship and finish the remainder on the ship," he adds. "There's never been an intent to take all the sailors off of that ship. If that ship needed to respond to a crisis today, we would respond." (More coronavirus stories.)

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