Sailors from aircraft carrier hit by coronavirus outbreak to quarantine in Guam hotels

A senior defense official told CNN Wednesday that the nearly 100 sailors from the ship have tested positive for coronavirus to date, representing more than 10% of all cases across the entire US military.

The official added that the Navy expects that the number will rise.

Approximately 1,000 of the ship's more than 4,000 crew members have been tested for the virus so far, according to the official.

The official said about 1,000 sailors have been moved ashore to Guam where the ship is currently in port. That is expected to rise to 3,000 in the coming days.

The outbreak on the ship is escalating rapidly. Last week the Pentagon confirmed three sailors on the Roosevelt had tested positive and that number had risen to 25 two days later. That number rose to at least 70 on Tuesday and nearly 100 on Wednesday. On Monday, a US defense official told CNN that a second US aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, is also facing a "handful" of positive cases.

As of Wednesday morning, 814 US service members in total had tested positive for the virus, according to the Pentagon.

Senior Navy officials have said that the absence of housing capacity in Guam was one of the reasons that getting sailors off the ship was taking longer than the aircraft carrier's commanding officer, Capt. Brett Crozier, would have liked.

"I know that our command organization has been aware of this for about 24 hours and we have been working actually the last seven days to move those sailors off the ship and get them into accommodations in Guam. The problem is that Guam doesn't have enough beds right now and were having to talk to the government there to see if we can get some hotel space, create tent-type facilities," Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly told CNN's John King Tuesday.

Guam's Governor Lou Leon Guerrero said at a press conference Wednesday she will allow sailors from the ship to stay in vacant hotel rooms in Guam if they test negative for the virus and undergo a 14-day quarantine.

She added that those sailors will continue to be required to have daily medical checks.

Navy officials have stressed that even if there was the capacity to evacuate all of the sailors that would not be possible due to the fact some sailors would be needed to stay aboard to operate the ship's nuclear reactor and perform other essential tasks.

CNN reported Tuesday that Crozier had warned Navy leadership that decisive action is required to save the lives of the ship's crew.

"We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors," Crozier wrote in a memo to the Navy's Pacific Fleet, three US defense officials have confirmed to CNN.

The commander of US Pacific Fleet declined to say how many sailors aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier had tested positive for the coronavirus but said that no one had been hospitalized.

"What I will tell you is I have no sailors hospitalized, I have no sailors on ventilators, I have no sailors in critical condition, no sailors in an ICU status on the Theodore Roosevelt," Adm. John Aquilino told reporters Tuesday.