LONDON—Britain’s Royal Navy is postponing the sailing of the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier for a planned training deployment so that its crew can be tested for COVID-19.
The 65,000-ton ship was due to head to sea on April 27, but its departure will now not take place until April 29 so that the 800-strong crew can be screened for the coronavirus illness.
Once at sea, the ship will remain within a helicopter flight’s distance of UK mainland hospitals for 14 days should any cases appear.
The precautions follow an outbreak of the illness on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which forced the ship to put into port in Guam and resulted in the sacking of its captain for going outside the chain of command for assistance. The French carrier Charles de Gaulle also cut short a training deployment after a COVID-19 outbreak onboard. More than 1,000 crewmembers tested positive for the illness on April 20, with cases traced back to a mid-March visit to the French port city of Brest.
The Queen Elizabeth is heading to sea as part of workups for a planned exercise in June.
The Royal Navy is planning to take the ship and its air wing, including F-35s from the U.S. Marine Corps, on a first deployment to the Far East in May 2021.
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