First came the stuffy nose, followed by a sore throat, ear pain and headache. By April 4, fever hit and her legs, lungs and chest began to ache. The inundated medical staff aboard the Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt wouldn’t take her temperature, so the young sailor self-medicated with the Mucinex and Nyquil that she had left over from a care package from home.

Her mother said she told her daughter to insist on a test, and she finally got one. But for almost a week, as she waited for results and fought her symptoms, she continued sleeping in close quarters with an apparently healthy sailor and working 16-hour shifts, from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., without wearing a mask.

“I just want to get soup to her,” the mother said in an interview with The Chronicle, her voice shaking. “She told me, ‘Mom, I feel like I’m dying.’

“Just knowing my daughter is halfway across the world and sick with a pandemic virus and basically all alone, I feel absolutely helpless,” she said.

Conversations with more than a dozen Roosevelt sailors and family members, and photographs, text messages, social media posts and videos they provided, offer an intimate glimpse of how a now notorious outbreak of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, aboard the nuclear-powered ship has played out over the past two weeks. Even as Navy officials downplayed the severity of the situation, saying the outbreak was under control, sailors who spoke with The Chronicle described unsettling scenes aboard the ship and in quarantine on shore, where avoiding close encounters or touching shipmates or common equipment is nearly unavoidable.

Worried parents said their sons and daughters who have shown symptoms have been working without masks — sometimes tearing up T-shirts to cover their faces — to clean the ship and cook meals as they await test results. One sailor who tested positive told his parents he’d rather be on the ship than crowded into a cramped group quarantine on shore in Guam with limited supplies, unsanitary conditions and mediocre food. Another shared stories of trying to sleep in group berths with coughs piercing the silence throughout the night.

The Chronicle agreed to withhold the names of sailors and some parents of crew members, who were not authorized to speak to the media or were concerned about repercussions, in accordance with its anonymous sources policy.

J. Myers Vasquez, a Navy spokesman, countered some of the claims, saying if Roosevelt sailors show flu-like symptoms, their tests are expedited and the crew members are isolated in sick bay until test results come back. Once confirmed positive for the coronavirus, the sailors are moved off the ship for a 14-day isolation period where they are monitored, he said.

Sailors not showing symptoms are also tested, he said, and test results take about three days to return from labs in South Korea. As of April 5, he said, sailors on board the carrier are following federal health guidelines that require protective coverings over their mouths.

As far as infected sailors’ care, Vasquez said, a Navy medical representative evaluates those in quarantine twice a day, and food and laundry service is delivered.

“Sailors have access to Wi-Fi to stay connected to the command, family, friends and support networks, and have virtual access to counseling services and chaplain services,” Vasquez said.

But some crew members and their parents paint a bleaker picture of the situation on the Roosevelt, which has been docked in Guam for more than two weeks. In that time, infection rates among its crew have soared, the ship’s commanding officer was ousted after The Chronicle reported on his letter pleading for help, and Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned after blasting the captain in an address to the ship’s crew, saying the captain had betrayed them.

On Thursday, the Navy announced the first hospitalization of a Roosevelt sailor. The unidentified crew member, who had tested positive, was found unresponsive. By Saturday, the Navy reported that 550 sailors from the ship have tested positive and 92% of the crew had been tested. Almost 3,700 sailors had been moved off the ship, nearing the limit the Navy has said it would remove.

“It’s a helpless, helpless feeling,” said Renea Blakewood, mother of 24-year-old Chris, an Orange Park, Fla., sailor on his first deployment. He tested positive Wednesday for the coronavirus. “We’re supposed to be taking care of our kids. I know he’s an adult, but he’ll always be my little son.”

Everything changed aboard the Roosevelt on March 22, when the first sailor tested positive for the coronavirus 13 days after it left Da Nang, Vietnam, after a five-day port visit. Critics have second-guessed the Navy’s insistence on visiting the country during a time when the novel coronavirus was starting to take hold there.

“The word spread, and the captain addressed it over the intercom,” one sailor told The Chronicle, after more infected sailors were identified. “They were flown off ASAP and anyone that had contact with (them) were placed in (restriction of movement) status.”

Most of the crew remained calm after that, sailors said, but as the ship continued through the Philippine Sea, they became aware that the contagion was spreading. By the time the Roosevelt tied up in Apra Harbor, Guam, on March 27, the number of positive cases had grown to 25, and would soon climb to 36.

“We knew it would be everywhere as soon as the day broke,” one sailor said.

As the crew raced to disinfect the ship with bleach and other disinfectants, the young sailors, many of whom had attended their senior proms just the year before, began to show concern. So did their commanding officer.

On March 30, Capt. Brett Crozier sent a stark email memo that would reverberate throughout the Navy, the military and the country.

“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier wrote his superiors, asking for immediate assistance to get 90% of his crew off the ship. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

After she read The Chronicle’s March 31 report on Crozier’s letter, Elizabeth Paz of Tulsa, Okla., immediately texted her 19-year-old daughter, who was already anxious on her first deployment on the Roosevelt. Paz told her daughter about the letter, and her daughter echoed Crozier’s concern that it was impossible to maintain proper distance among thousands of crew members in the confined spaces of the ship.

Paz’s daughter texted her: “There is no way at all for social distancing I’m so close to people all the time i run in to people all the time i tough (sic) people on accident just from walking around.” She felt sick, she told Paz, but had not been tested.

“Please be very vocal about getting taken care of,” Paz told her. “If you get sick I have to be able to FaceTime you so I can talk to drs and nurses. I would really want you brought back here if you got sick. It can happen really fast too. One minute you are OK and the next you are very sick.”

Sailors said apprehension spread among the crew. One officer told The Chronicle the mood became “very mixed.”

“I personally have been … mad, sad, worried, concerned and even scared.”

After days of silence, Paz’s phone buzzed just before 4:30 a.m. April 2 with a text from her daughter. The sailor who sat a few feet away from her had tested positive and she was ordered to clear her work area.

Despite the close contact she’d had and feeling sick, she wasn’t tested, she told her mother. She’d continued cleaning and working long hours. Her mother tried to comfort her, but also texted a dire prediction.

Inside the newsroom Anonymous sources: The Chronicle strives to attribute all information we report to credible, reliable, identifiable sources. Presenting information from an anonymous source occurs extremely rarely, and only when that information is considered crucially important and all other on-the-record options have been exhausted. In such cases, The Chronicle has complete knowledge of the unnamed person’s identity and of how that person is in position to know the information. The Chronicle’s detailed policy governing the use of such sources, including the use of pseudonyms, is available on SFChronicle.com.

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“Everyone is going to end up getting it at some point. There is no way around it.”

Her daughter’s disturbing message came days after Navy officials held multiple news conferences trying to calm criticism of their handling of the outbreak and giving assurance that the evacuation of much of the ship was under way.

Later that same day, Crozier would be relieved of his command, cheered by his crew as he departed the ship. His departure was a big hit to morale, sailors said. They would soon learn through the media that their ousted captain had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Within days, the situation aboard the Roosevelt worsened. The number of infected sailors grew as virus test results came back. Parents of those who tested positive had new concerns.

“My daughter tested positive for COVID-19,” one mother shared on a Facebook page for Roosevelt families. “She’s doing OK. But she’s really uncomfortable. She’s off the ship, sleeping on a cot in a kitchen.”

Meanwhile, the sailor who had been treating her symptoms with her own medication waited anxiously for her test results. Days after her nose was swabbed, she continued working, with no mask or facial covering. She slept next to her asymptomatic bunkmate.

“You have to get a mask! Where can you get a mask?!,” her mother recalled telling her over the phone. “She’s like, ‘Mom, they don’t give us one!’

“This is straight bulls—,” the mother said in an interview. “I’m livid.”

A program director for a medical assisting program, the mother has had to work at home during a shelter-in-place order. But she has called in sick of late, she said, because she’s been racked with anxiety and not sleeping.

“I just feel like in a way my daughter is in prison,” she said, crying. “Friends tell me, ‘She’s young, she’s healthy, she’ll be fine.’ But that’s not their child.”

On Thursday, Chris Blakewood ate his dinner of cut-up hot dogs and rice. It was a better meal than the pasta MRE he was served at the Guam Navy base gym where infected Roosevelt sailors are sent for a 14-day group quarantine. By contrast, his shipmates who have tested negative are isolating in five-star Guam hotels, sharing Snapchat photos of the prime rib and other luxury cuisine they are enjoying, said Chris’ father, Mark Blakewood.

When his 24-year-old son first arrived at the gym, it was a room full of empty cots and fewer than 50 sailors bedding there. But over the past few days, Blakewood said Friday, his son has seen a spike in the numbers sent there, with more than 350 crammed into the space. “They keep needing to get more cots,” he said.

Chris gets up early to have a better shot at one of only eight outlets to charge his electronic devices. He had hoped to pass the time using the TurboTax program to secure an income tax refund, his father said, but the demands on the spotty Wi-Fi have made it impossible.

The quarantined sailors are using linens taken from the ship. Chris hangs his wet towel on the gym bleachers to dry, Blakewood said, and he has had to borrow toothpaste, as toiletries are running low. His 6-foot, 215-pound son, a workout fanatic, doesn’t fit on his cot, so sleeping has been a problem.

“More needs to be done for our kids who put their lives on the line for our country,” said Chris’ mother, Renea Blakewood.

Elizabeth Paz’s texts from her daughter have been more sporadic. Kept busy working and cleaning, the young sailor has sometimes gone days with no communication at all. Paz, meanwhile, has tried to read every report she can about the situation on the Roosevelt.

On Thursday, her daughter finally answered Paz’s repeated inquiries.

“Yes i got the results back it’s negative,” she wrote. On Friday, she left for a hotel room and quarantine.

“Well that’s amazing,” Paz wrote back.

For the mother of the Roosevelt sailor who had been on the ship for six days with a fever, aches and lung pain, the news from Guam was not happy. On Friday, she learned what she had suspected — her daughter was positive for coronavirus. She was being moved to the gym.

“I had already prepared myself for it since she had all the symptoms for a week,” the mother said. “I am worried sick and very scared for her.”

She also believes her daughter very likely got other sailors sick.

“So they kept a positive corona on the ship for six days, not in quarantine and with no mask, pending results,” the mother said. “That’s irresponsible in my book.”

Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni