52 Infected After Navy Fails to Prevent Virus Spread on Ship
This article is co-published in conjunction with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent watchdog.
Late last month, barely a week after the Navy’s Military Sealift Command assured the public that the coronavirus was not spreading among civilian mariners, the virus ripped through the USNS Leroy Grumman, leaving nearly half the crew and 30 contractors infected, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has learned.
One mariner has been hospitalized in critical condition, while a contractor died of what his family says are complications of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Mariners tell POGO that the ship’s leaders struggled to respond to the outbreak, potentially exacerbating the viral spread.
Pressure on the Military Sealift Command is mounting after the House Armed Services Committee expressed concerns that the measures in place were not protecting the health of the crew or the public.
Two of the highest-profile Navy outbreaks, on an aircraft carrier and a guided missile destroyer, were widely reported and infected at least 1,200 sailors. The Pentagon’s internal watchdog recently opened an investigation into the Navy’s response to outbreaks on its ships. (The inquiry will not address the Military Sealift Command’s response, according to a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office.)
The outbreak on the Grumman, docked at a shipyard in Boston, spread through the crew and to contractors in a matter of days. The entire crew has been isolated in a hotel in Boston since May 2, after 22 of the 46 crew members had tested positive for COVID-19, according to mariners who spoke with POGO on condition of anonymity.
POGO recently reported on the difficult situation facing merchant mariners who serve on Navy vessels with the Military Sealift Command. Since late March, they have been under a strict lockdown order, a so-called gangway up order, that alarmed mariners and their unions. Mariners told POGO that even as they were confined to their ships, the order inexplicably allowed contractors and other personnel to move on and off the ships, piercing the ships’ quarantine “bubble,” as it’s known in the maritime industry. A congressional committee tasked with overseeing the Navy seemed to agree.
“While we trust that Military Sealift Command is acting in good faith to protect the workforce, we have concerns about reports that military, civilian, and contractor personnel are freely allowed on and off MSC ships, diminishing the effectiveness of the bubble MSC is trying to create,” wrote Monica Matoush, Democratic spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee, in a statement to POGO.
On top of the inquiry from the committee, Military Sealift Command is now facing an escalating labor dispute. On May 18, all three unions representing the mariners have invoked arbitration after they found the command’s response to a grievance they filed last month unsatisfactory, according to emails from the unions to their members and shared with POGO. The formal arbitration kicks off a long process that could end up in federal court. The unions contend that the gangway-up order should apply to everyone on the ships where merchant marines have been ordered to remain, and that if the command won’t change the terms of the order, then the mariners deserve additional compensation while under the order.
As part of the gangway-up order, any mariner who was on leave was immediately called back to the fleet’s dozens of ships, according to text of the order reviewed by POGO. In some cases, this meant merchant mariners flying from the relative safety of their homes to ports in cities considered hotspots and boarding ships where social distancing was impossible, mariners told POGO.
About a month after issuing the order, as the workforce became increasingly concerned, the admiral in charge of Military Sealift Command told USNI News he thought the command’s response to the coronavirus was effective.
“The evidence is we have been doing all the right things,” Admiral Michael Wettlaufer told the publication, a day after the first cases emerged on the Grumman. The admiral failed to mention those cases to USNI News, and just days later the true extent of the virus’ spread on the ship would become clear.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/52-infected-after-us-navy-fails-to-prevent-coronavirus-spread-on-usns-leroy-grumman?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
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