Secretary of Defense perplexed by mystery of 'mostly asymptomatic' crew of aircraft carrier with coronavirus outbreak
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It has been reported that more than half of the crew members on board the US nuclear aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt , who have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus through tests, are not showing any symptoms of the disease.
Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard US aircraft carrier are symptom-free - Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN21Y2GB
As of March 31, 2020, more than 100 people on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt had been infected with the new coronavirus, leading to the dismissal of Captain Brett Crozier, who had expressed a sense of crisis.
Subsequent testing has revealed that many more crew members have been infected with the new coronavirus, and as of April 17, 2020, when testing for about 94% of the 4,800 crew members had been completed, the number of infected people exceeded 600. In addition, on April 13, a 41-year-old crew member who served as the chief of aviation weapons on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt lost his life to the new coronavirus, and as of April 16, six crew members have been forced to be hospitalized .
Meanwhile, according to an announcement by Vice Admiral Philip Sawyer of the U.S. Navy, of the more than 600 crew members who tested positive, 60% showed no symptoms of COVID-19. This is only the situation as of April 17, so it is not certain that symptoms will not appear in the future, but the figure of '60% asymptomatic' is more than double the estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that ' about 25% are asymptomatic ,' which is a very high figure.
The US military has responded with confusion to these results. In a television interview, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper , when asked about the high number of asymptomatic cases, responded, 'We're troubled.'
'We are finding that this stealth capability of asymptomatic transmission is a secret weapon of the enemy, the COVID-19 virus,' Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham, Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, said in a statement.
by US Pacific Fleet
Meanwhile, Reuters, which reported on the matter, said, 'The USS Theodore Roosevelt provides researchers with an example of how the new coronavirus can spread asymptomatically in a confined environment populated mostly by young people,' suggesting that many of the infected people are asymptomatic because they are young.
'This is an interesting case because we don't know exactly what percentage of people with COVID-19 don't have symptoms,' said William Shaffner, a professor of infectious disease and preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
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