U.S. Navy and Marine Corps service members in Guam were ordered on Wednesday to break their own quarantine to set up makeshift shelters for U.S. troops coming off a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, where an outbreak of the novel coronavirus is rapidly spreading within the hulls of the ship.
Some of the U.S. troops at Naval Base Guam, located on the western side of the U.S. territory at Apra Harbor, were assembled into 100-man working parties to begin transforming some of the base’s facilities into temporary quarantine shelters for some of the 5,000 service members arriving from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, a naval vessel where COVID-19 is spreading.
“We found several more cases aboard the ship, we are in the process now of testing 100 percent of the crew of that ship to ensure that we are able to contain whatever spread that might have occurred there…but I also want to emphasize that the ship is operationally capable and can do it’s mission if required,” said Acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modly at the Pentagon on Thursday.
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