The warship, which had participated in operations in the eastern Mediterranean and in the North Sea, arrived today at its military base 11 days earlier than originally planned.
The 1,800 sailors of the French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle will remain confined to their military bases for 14 days after docking this Sunday in the port of Toulon, southeast France, after confirming that there were 50 positive cases of coronavirus on board.
The French warship, which had participated in operations in the eastern Mediterranean and in the North Sea, has arrived at its military base today, 11 days earlier than originally planned . The French Defense Ministry decided to shorten its mission, which was due to end on April 23, by discovering the presence of an invisible stowaway, Covid-19.
After completing three months of mission, the 50 patients will be transferred to the hospital and the rest of the crew will be isolated in their naval and aircraft bases, where they must remain in quarantine for 14 days without contact with their families. Three sailors had already been airlifted on April 9 to a military hospital in France as a precautionary measure.
During confinement, sailors will be tested for the coronavirus and their health status will be checked before they can return home, the French defense ministry said. The ship and the aircraft on board will also be disinfected , so that the aircraft carrier is operational as soon as possible.
Unlike other occasions when the military port is full of relatives and curious to see the arrival of the Charles de Gaulle, this time it was practically deserted due to the confinement measures in France for the coronavirus, according to the local press.
The carrier sailed from Toulon on January 21, when no case of Covid-19 had yet been officially detected. It is still not known how the sailors were infected and who is the patient zero of the ship.
Since March 15, when they made their last call in Brest (north-western France), the ship had not touched down and had received no visitors on board. Three weeks passed between the last call and when the first cases were detected on board. The contagion is suspected to have occurred precisely during the stopover in Brest, between March 13-15. The French government decreed quarantine throughout the country on March 17.
The Charles de Gaulle has participated in the past three months in military operations against Islamists in Iraq and Syria and in European naval exercises in the Atlantic and North Sea.
