WASHINGTON — Aboard the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, recent history is repeating itself.
As sailors and other crew members who were quarantined on Guam return to the ship and begin preparations to return to sea, tensions have flared again between the ship’s medical personnel and Navy leadership over whether the Roosevelt is ready to go back to work in the Pacific Ocean.
Medical personnel and crew members aboard the Roosevelt say that several returning sailors have displayed symptoms that they associate with the coronavirus. But Navy officials counter that the sailors have tested negative twice, and that they may have the flu.
In one instance last week, according to a crew member aboard the ship, several sailors with symptoms associated with the coronavirus were accidentally placed on a bus bound for the Roosevelt. The entire bus was then sent back to quarantine and the sailors were tested again, Navy officials said.
“If the results come back negative the sailors will return to the ship — if they are positive then the sailors will remain in quarantine and will be retested after a four-day wait period,” the Navy said in an emailed response to The New York Times.
In a letter to the crew of the Roosevelt dated May 1 and obtained by The New York Times, Capt. Carlos A. Sardiello, the current commanding officer of the 1,000-foot-long nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, acknowledged that the threat of the virus “onboard the ship remains real.”
But on Monday night, the captain also gave a series of telephone interviews from the ship to reporters in Washington in which he repeated assurances that the Roosevelt was ready to get back to work.
“You’ve just got to give them direction and give them the tools that they need,” he told The Associated Press in one interview. “Then, whatever you put in front of them — they’re going to knock it out of the park.”
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Aboard the ship, the crew is not so sure. Medical personnel, who have been reluctant to bring sailors back aboard even after 21 days of isolation and two to three tests, expressed frustration, according to a health care provider on Guam.
The divergence of assessments mirrors a similar split in March, when the coronavirus first arrived aboard the ship and led to a tumultuous series of events, including the removal of the ship’s commander, Capt. Brett E. Crozier, and the resignation of the acting secretary of the Navy, Thomas B. Modly.
The Navy has stopped releasing daily updates on the number of virus cases among the crew after publicly announcing that 100 percent of the sailors had been tested. Roughly 1,700 sailors remain on Guam, many of them still quarantined and recovering.
Sailors clean the Roosevelt three to four times a day, and failing to wear a protective mask may now subject a sailor to nonjudicial punishment, said a crew member aboard the ship.
“The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt is a deployed unit and ready for tasking if needed,” Cmdr. J. Myers Vasquez, a U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman, said in an email. “We remain focused on the health and safety of our sailors, and ensuring the full recovery of all sailors on board U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt.”
In his letter, Captain Sardiello told the crew to “act like you and each of your shipmates have it and just don’t know it yet.” He said that the Roosevelt’s “collective effort to achieve and maintain a Covid-free ship can be undone by a single individual’s offense or inattention.”
Captain Sardiello said to expect daily medical screenings and to “transit the ship at all times like we are conducting a Man Overboard muster; up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side. This will limit the risk of transmission by reducing close passes.”
Captain Sardiello, who previously commanded the Theodore Roosevelt, was reinstated just over a month ago when Captain Crozier was removed.
Though top Navy officials have recommended the reinstatement of Captain Crozier, a leader adored by his crew, the Navy initiated a broader investigation into the outbreak of the virus aboard the Roosevelt after a preliminary inquiry.
“I have unanswered questions that the preliminary inquiry has identified and that can only be answered by a deeper review,” the acting Navy secretary, James E. McPherson, said in a statement.
Mr. McPherson said he was directing the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael M. Gilday, to oversee the investigation, which is expected to conclude at the end of the month. Adm. Robert P. Burke, the vice chief of naval operations and the officer who conducted the preliminary inquiry, will also carry out the larger investigation.
And in another twist, the Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing on Thursday on President Trump’s nomination of Kenneth Braithwaite to be the permanent secretary of the Navy. If the full Senate ultimately confirms Mr. Braithwaite, who is currently the U.S. ambassador to Norway, it is not clear how he will handle the outcome of the Roosevelt investigation or the possible reinstatement of Captain Crozier.
The Kidd, a Navy destroyer and the second deployed American warship stricken with the virus, has returned to port in San Diego with dozens of cases aboard. The ship was deployed to the eastern Pacific as part of a counternarcotics operation.
It is unclear how the virus got aboard the Kidd, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said Monday during a webinar with the Brookings Institution. But illness spread quickly among the roughly 300 crew members.
“The statistics show that the safest place to be is on a deployed Navy ship, as compared to one that’s in port,” Mr. Esper said. “Of the 90-plus ships we have at sea, we only have two that have been affected.”
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