Hospital ship arrives in LA as California braces for crisis on par with New York

The Mercy hospital ship docked on Friday morning at the Port of Los Angeles, joining California’s battle against the coronavirus as the state prepares to meet New York City levels of demand on hospitals, possibly within days.

The Mercy is one of two supertankers the navy converted to a floating hospital. Typically deployed to provide disaster relief, the ship has fully equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, and a landing deck for military helicopters.

Speaking from an afternoon press conference, with navy ships as a backdrop, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said the Mercy was fully staffed and operational with 800 medical staffers and 12 operating rooms. It would be ready to start taking patients as early as tomorrow, Newsom said.

The Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, joining Newsom at the press conference, said the ship would increase available hospital beds by two-thirds across Los Angeles and become the city’s largest hospital.

The ship arrived as Los Angeles prepares for a surge in cases similar to those now overwhelming hospitals in New York.

Conservative estimates indicate California will have a caseload comparable to New York’s within 12 days, while the most aggressive say that could occur within five days, Garcetti said.

“Either way, we will have doctors making excruciating decisions on how to deal with that surge. That’s the rate of increase we are seeing now,” added the mayor.

He said the Mercy will act as a “Covid-19-free bubble”, serving patients unrelated to the outbreak to free up room at other hospitals in the city for critical care.

“This ship is full of angels in a city of angels,” Garcetti said. “Every bed not taken in Los Angeles will mean one more bed for the surge.”

The Mercy’s admiral said the ship would serve as a “relief valve” that allows other hospitals to focus on treating Covid-19 patients.

While New York remains ground zero for the fight against the virus, with more than half the nation’s coronavirus cases, cases in California are ballooning. As of Friday afternoon, more than 4,500 cases were confirmed statewide, with 1,400 in Los Angeles alone.

Newsom has said the state needs to add 50,000 hospital beds to meet the projected demand. About 30,000 of those beds will come from the state’s hospital system. The remaining 20,000 will be cobbled together through various sources such as the Mercy ship and field hospitals.

State leaders hustling to find shelter for the unhoused have located 4,666 hotel rooms. Garcetti said Los Angeles would receive 637 trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be used for shelter.

Newsom also announced on Friday a temporary statewide ban on evictions for those who have lost work or pay due to the coronavirus crisis. The order prevents landlords from evicting tenants for not paying rent, and extends through 31 May.

Renters are still required to pay owed rent and have to notify their landlords in writing within a week of a missed payment, according to the governor’s executive order.

The coronavirus is already wreaking havoc on the US economy with a particularly staggering effect on California, the world’s fifth-largest economy. Newsom said this week that more than 1 million Californians had filed for unemployment since March 13.

The state’s unemployment department has seen 108,000 unemployment claims a day, he added, up from 2,000 claims on a typical day before the pandemic took hold.

The state’s 40 million residents are currently under lockdown orders to leave their homes only for essential services and exercise, and the governor called on Californians to continue to observe physical distancing guidelines. Officials have closed beaches and parking lots across the state, which have become especially crowded on weekends, and Newsom urged residents to do their part.