Mississippi asks US government for military hospital ship as hospitals become overwhelmed

The dean of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine says system ‘will fail’ within ten days

The USNS Comfort hospital ship exits the harbor in front of the Statue of Liberty as it heads back to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia on April 30, 2020 in the Red Hook neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Getty Images)

A surge of Covid cases that threatens to overwhelm Mississippi’s healthcare system has seen the state ask the White House to send in a military hospital ship.

Officials have warned that the state’s health care system could collapse in the next week under the pressure of a dramatic spike in Coronavirus cases.

Mississippi’s Director of Health Protection Jim Craig said the state had asked the federal government to send a ship like the USNS Comfort, which treated sick patients in New York City in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

“We began conversations with them,” said Mr Craig.

“The way that you do that is put a request in for the resource. So we have requested information about how the USNS Comfort and-or its resources could ... come and provide assistance in the state of Mississippi.”

The dean of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine LouAnn Woodward said on Wednesday that their medical facility was treating 127 Covid patients, 26 of whom were children.

And she stated that 90 per cent of their patients were unvaccinated.

“The Mississippi hospital system will fail within the next five to seven or ten days if the current trajectory continues,” she said.

Mississippi is averaging nearly 2,700 new Covid-19 infections a day in the past week, a seven day increase of 54 per cent, according to The Washington Post.

Health officials reported more than 4,400 new cases on Thursday and 20 deaths.

There are now more than 1,500 people hospitalised in the state with Covid, and 400 ICU beds have been filled by people with the virus.

The situation is now worse than last winter, which was the worst period of the pandemic the state has seen.

USNS Comfort, which has 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms, was deployed for a month at the beginning of pandemic last year to help treat patients as New York was the country’s first major battleground with the virus.

In the end the crew of the ship, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, treated 180 patients, of which 70 per cent had Covid.

Mississippi has seen more than 376,000 Covid cases and 7,730 deaths.