Navy hospital ship to L.A. as Trump activates National Guard in Calif, Washington, NY
The U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy will go to Los Angeles to help California deal with a critical shortage of hospital beds due to coronavirus patients, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday.
He also announced that he had activated the National Guard in California, Washington state and New York under an arrangement that puts governors of each state in control of those forces, but all the costs will be paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“These states have been hit the hardest,” Trump told reporters at a White House press briefing.
Medical equipment and supplies including respirators, surgical masks and gowns, face shields, coveralls and gloves were on the way, he said. Disaster declarations were approved for California, Washington and New York, making federal funding available for emergency measures.
While Washington state has more COVID-19 cases, the need for hospital beds was greater in California, FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor said.
“The hospital ship Mercy would have the greatest impact in California. The Department of Defense has been given direction to dispatch it to Los Angeles immediately. DOD has advised Mercy can get into position within a week or less of today’s order,” Gaynor said.
“Even though there are more cases right now in Washington, the projected need for beds in California is five times more that of Washington,” Gaynor said. “The Mercy will be used to take pressure off local hospitals, other medical needs and not for treating COVID-19 cases.”
The Mercy, like her sister ship the USNS Comfort, which is expected to arrive in New York City in a few weeks, is being fitted to be able to treat up to 1,000 patients at a time and can carry a blood bank of up to 5,000 units.
Trump said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be building land-based, alternative care sites in the three states for individuals with COVID-19. In California, he said eight large federal medical stations will be built that will have at least 2,000 beds. The state of Washington will get three large and four small medical facilities with 1,000 beds.
It was not immediately clear where the medical stations would be located.
“We are filling the governors’ requests, and so we send that resource to them. They’ll put it to best use. They’ll put it to where they will have the most effect. So we don’t dictate exactly where it goes,” Gaynor said.
Trump aid he is still considering an offer from Carnival Corporation to turn several cruise ships into temporary hospitals. Similar to the Navy ships, the cruise ships would be used as infirmaries for people with illnesses other than the coronavirus.
“If we need them. I hope we don’t need them,” Trump said of the cruise ships at the briefing.
Governors had activated components of their states’ National Guard, but Trump’s action shifts funding for the operations to the federal government.
Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, later told reporters that typically it costs about $8 million to $9 million a month to activate 1,000 National Guard members.
Service members could be used for law enforcement, crowd control or curfew enforcement, much like they can when they help in responding to hurricanes.
If those state-controlled National Guard troops were put under federal control, they would be more limited in what they could do, because U.S. law prohibits active duty military under the president’s control from being used for law enforcement within the states.
The announcement “does not federalize the national guard members,” Gaynor said. “The National Guard is still under the authority of each governor, it will work in concert with the Department of Defense.”
“This is not martial law,” Gaynor added.
The White House announcement does not mean that the entire National Guard in each state is now under orders, Lengyel said.
“It doesn’t mean that everyone in the state National Guard is called to duty,” Lengyel said. Instead, it allows the governor to decide what units they need and get fully reimbursed for the units they activate to respond to the coronavirus.
The forces already activated “are in it for the long haul,” Lengyel said, noting that the Guard is already helping at test sites and delivering food.
California’s National Guard has about 18,500 members and Washington state has 8,000, according to the National Guard fact sheets on each state.
Lengyel also stressed that the Guard was not being activated to enforce a quarantine. “My main message is that there is no plan, there is no activity to become part of some quarantine operation. It’s just not true.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2020 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Navy hospital ship to L.A. as Trump activates National Guard in Calif, Washington, NY."
