The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort will be leaving New York City after treating only 179 during its three-week stay, according to Business Insider.
Governor Andrew Cuomo told President Donald Trump on Tuesday the city no longer needs the vessel for medical care.
"It was very good to have in case we had overflow, but I said we don't really need the Comfort anymore," Cuomo said, and while having the ship in New York City gave New Yorkers comfort, "we don't need it anymore, so if they need to deploy that somewhere else, they should take it."
Trump deployed the Comfort to New York City in late March to help with any non-coronavirus patients who were unable to receive treatment in city hospitals. On the first day of its arrival, however, the 1,000-bed ship was used to treat only 20 patients.
The Comfort's bed count was later reduced to 500 as a social distancing measure to keep from spreading coronavirus onboard.
After criticism from health officials like Michael Dowling, who runs Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in New York, the ship switched missions and began treating coronavirus patients.
"I've asked Andrew if we could bring the Comfort back to its base in Virginia so that we could have it for other locations, and he said we would be able to do that," Trump said during the Tuesday coronavirus briefing at the White House.
Trump added: "The Javits Center has been a great help to them, but we'll be bringing the ship back at the earliest time, and we'll get it ready for its next mission, which I'm sure will be an important one also."
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