The Ministry of the Armed Forces announced, Wednesday, April 8, that about forty members of the crew of the French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle were recently carrying "symptoms compatible" with the Covid-19.

"Starting today, a screening team with test facilities will be dispatched to the aircraft carrier, in order to [identify] the cases that have arisen and to prevent the spread of the virus on board the ship," said the ministry. in a press release. "No aggravation was noted" and "the sailors presenting symptoms were placed in isolated confinement", he specifies.

It is reported that the ship, currently in the Atlantic, was anticipating its return to Toulon, in the south of France, to return before the initially scheduled date of April 23. The building "was already coming back, it is short," said the cabinet of Minister Florence Parly, implying that this "common sense decision" posed no operational problem.

Six hundred cases identified within the Army

The crew currently represents a total of 1,760 sailors, with around 20 Rafale combat aircraft and two Hawkeye surveillance aircraft.

The contamination or suspicion figures are not detailed within the armed forces. But according to the latest estimate communicated by Florence Parly on Saturday, some 600 cases (civil and military) have been identified. A civilian agent attached to the Defense Infrastructure Service has died.

The Covid-19 pandemic has already struck another American aircraft carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, in the Pacific. The management of the crisis by the American authorities, who refused to evacuate the ship and then dismissed the commander, led to the resignation of the secretary to the US Navy.

With AFP

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