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Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper speak before the departure of the USNS Comfort.

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President Trump bid farewell to the USNS Comfort Saturday as the Navy’s hospital ship cast off on a coronavirus mercy mission to New York City.

“This ship is a 70,000-ton message of hope and solidarity to the incredible people of New York, a place I know very well, a place I love,” he said at a small, socially-distant gathering of about a dozen military officials at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.



“We are with you all the way,” he told New Yorkers. “You have the unwavering support of the entire nation.”

But he expanded on his surprise announcement, made earlier Saturday, that he could soon impose travel restrictions on those who live in the the city and its surroundings.

“If you are from the New York metropolitan area and you travel elsewhere, we need you to self-quarantine for 14 days to help us contain the spread of the virus,” Trump said, referring to the CDC’s guidelines on interstate travel.

“And I am considering — and will make a decision very quickly, very shortly — a quarantine, because it’s such a hot area, of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.”

The rules would not apply to truckers making deliveries or transiting the region. “It won’t affect trade in any way,” Trump promised.



The Comfort’s 1,000 hospital beds will relieve pressure on the city’s burdened emergency rooms — taking on trauma patients and others not suffering symptoms of COVID-19.

“By treating non-infected people remotely on the ship, it will help to halt very strongly the transmission of the virus,” Trump explained.

Its sister ship, the USNS Mercy, docked in Los Angeles Friday to perform the same role for that hard-hit city.

The Comfort and its 1,200 medical personnel — including doctors, nurses, technicians, and orderlies — will dock at Pier 90, at the foot of West 50th Street in Manhattan.

The bright white vessels, emblazoned with large red crosses, are usually deployed on humanitarian missions to foreign countries grappling with the aftermath of natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.

“This will really be the first time that they’ve been used in the United States,” Navy Secretary Thomas Modly told Fox News on Saturday.