The US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort arrived in New York Harbour this week to serve as a 1,000-bed release valve for the most overstretched health care system in the US. But several days after its arrival, with the city still struggling to cope with a surging epidemic, the ship’s extraordinary capacity remains mostly unused, with only 20 patients confirmed aboard.

Heralded by Donald Trump as “a 70,000-ton message of hope and solidarity to the incredible people of New York” when it departed from Norfolk, Virginia, the Comfort is comprehensively equipped with up-to-date medical technology, a pharmacy, oxygen-producing plants and a helicopter deck.

It was intended to provide vital health care capacity by taking on patients diagnosed with conditions other than Covid-19. Some New York hospitals are having to turn such patients away both because of lack of beds and for fear they will become infected.

And yet the Comfort is not accepting them.

According to the New York Times, the Navy has provided hospitals with a list of 49 medical conditions that would rule patients out from boarding the ship, and there is an absolute ban on bringing anyone testing positive for coronavirus aboard for fear that the Comfort will prove impossible to disinfect afterwards.

Patients must therefore be evaluated at a city hospital and tested for the virus before they can be brought aboard, greatly slowing down the process and in turn meaning little pressure is taken off the city’s services.

Speaking to the Times, the head of the city’s largest hospital system pointed out that with Covid-19 infections surging, reserving the ship for non-Covid patients makes little sense. “It’s pretty ridiculous … if you’re not going to help us with the people we need help with, what’s the purpose?”

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The Covid-19 outbreak in New York remains by far the worst in the US, with cases now passing the 50,000 mark. The city says it now has less than a week’s worth of ventilators left with which to treat critically ill patients; a field hospital has been constructed in Central Park and refrigerated trucks deployed as temporary morgues.