More than a dozen sailors from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for COVID-19 after they were believed to have recovered, which medical experts say shows how much remains unknown about the virus that causes the disease.
The episode aboard the carrier, which is now back at sea after being sidelined in Guam since late March by a COVID-19 outbreak that infected more than 1,100 members of its roughly 4,900-strong crew, occurred against a backdrop of reports from Germany and South Korea that also found positive test outcomes in previously infected people.
After exhibiting no symptoms for three straight days, each sailor was tested again. If he or she tested negative, then they had to wait another three or four days to be retested. Only if that final test was also negative were they “considered recovered” and allowed out of isolation and back onto the ship, Vasquez said. In practice, this meant sailors who tested positive were in isolation “for almost three weeks,” he added.
The Theodore Roosevelt left Guam and entered the Philippine Sea on May 21 to conduct carrier qualification flights for its embarked carrier air wing, according to a Navy announcement. The ship is operating under a new set of measures designed to mitigate the risk of another outbreak, including minimizing in-person meetings, wearing masks and expanding meal hours to enable social distancing.
The test “detects the presence of antigens, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you whether it’s live virus or dead virus,” Matthew Donovan, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told reporters on May 21. “The ones that are retesting positive may actually have those antigens in their blood, but it may be dead virus.
Another complication is that even though individuals who test positive after recovering may not be infectious, they may still suffer mild symptoms such as those reported by the Theodore Roosevelt crew members, according to Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. Patel also sounded an optimistic note about the other reports of COVID-19 survivors who have retested positive. “I haven’t seen global evidence of reinfection,” she said. It might be a plausible explanation in some cases, she added, “but given how infectious this virus is, I would expect there to be more.”
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