Gen. O'Shaughnessy on Cuomo calling for USNS Comfort to treat coronavirus patients
Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy on push to move COVID-19 patients to Navy hospital ship.
Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), joined "Your World with Neil Cavuto" Monday to address New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's call for the hospital ship USNS Comfort to amid and treat coronavirus patients.
About an hour after the interview aired, Cuomo tweeted that Trump had "agreed to our request to treat #COVID patients on the UNSN Comfort."
"This means 1,000 additional beds staffed by federal personnel," Cuomo wrote. "This will provide much-needed relief to our over stressed hospital systems."
"We know that, for example, the Javits Center [in Manhattan] was originally a non-covered center. We have to adjust fire," O'Shaughnessy said. "We know that the demand signals such, [that] we need to do COVID patients. So we re-did that. And now that actually has COVID [patients] at it now."
CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE
"We had some folks come in last night to the 'Comfort' in need of urgent care, and so we gave it to them. Turns out several them were positive [for coronavirus] again," Shaughnessy explained. "And so they're in our AC units right now ... they need medical attention. We give them medical attention. And so we're taking all this into consideration."
The commander made it clear to Cavuto the ship is tied into the New York City health systems.
"But I'll tell you right now, we will not refuse anyone medical attention if they need it," O'Shaughnessy said. "Everyone who has arrived with the comfort has been taken care of. We've trained for some of them once they're able to be transferred over to the Javits Center. I think that's the beauty of the approach we brought. We bring the whole and the full spectrum, from low-end to high-end, and we're able to take it all. And we're tied right into the New York City and the New York State Hospital Systems."
CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK STATE BY STATE
Shaughnessy told Cavuto that Americans following the White House task force's guideline has had a large impact on the number of cases of the coronavirus.
"But we also have to realize the great impact that we've had as a result of this, is this kind of isolation and what really an enormous impact that's had in the case loads that we're seeing," Shaughnessy said.
Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox