BREAKING NEWS: Coronavirus-hit US aircraft carrier sailor becomes ship’s first crew member to die from Covid-19

A SAILOR serving on the USS Theodore Roosevelt has become the first of the aircraft carrier’s crew to die from coronavirus.

The US Navy announced that the sailor, whose name has not been released, lost his life to complications from the virus today, Monday.

He was diagnosed with Covid-19 on March 30, and he, along with four other crew members, were put into isolation on the island of Guam, the Navy reported.

On Thursday morning he was moved into intensive care after he was found to be unresponsive.

The Roosevelt hit the headlines at the end of last month when the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier’s captain Brett Crozier sent an urgent plea to the Pentagon for more help in dealing with a Covid-19 outbreak on board.

Crozier recommended removing the majority of the ship’s more than 4,000 personnel from the ship and putting them in isolation for 14 days.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” Crozier wrote in his letter.

“If we do not act now, we are failing to take care of our most trusted asset – our sailors.”

His action cost him his command. But the public reaction to his firing prompted the resignation of acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly, who told sailors aboard the aircraft carrier that Crozier’s actions had showed he was “too naive, or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this.”

Just days after he was sacked Crozier himself contracted Covid-19.

By Sunday, 585 of the Roosevelt’s crew had tested positive for the virus.

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Written by

Cathy Elelman

Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.

Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.

Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.

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