The good news is that the Pentagon announced that it is activating the two US Navy hospital ships, USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort, notionally to provide additional capacity in the developing coronavirus pandemic. The bad news is that it is increasingly unclear how much support they will provide and when they will be able to deploy.

USNS Mercy is stationed in San Diego, CA and is expected to deploy along the US West Coast. USNS Comfort is based in Norfolk, VA and will be sent to New York harbor. Both ships are converted San Clemente-class oil tankers.

No deployment dates have been given so far, but particularly in the case of the USNS Comfort, it may take a number of weeks before the ship can sail for New York City. CNBC reports “The Comfort is currently in for maintenance in Norfolk, so they are going to expedite the maintenance if they can and prepare it,” explained Jonathan Hoffman, assistant defense secretary for public affairs. “That’s not a days issue, that is a weeks issue. So it’s gonna be a little while,” he added. Apparently, the best estimates are that the Comfort may arrive sometime next month.

USNS Mercy is expected to deploy more quickly after bringing aboard staff and medical equipment. Its final destination has yet to be identified.

Once the hospital ships arrive, however, they will not be treating patients with the coronavirus. Defense Secretary Mark Esper made clear to CNN that two Navy hospital ships being deployed to help respond to the coronavirus outbreak will not treat patients suffering from the virus. The ship’s onboard hospitals will be used to free up capacity in civilian hospitals that are expected to be overwhelmed with cases of the virus.

The deployment of the hospital ships may, paradoxically, reduce the number of civilian doctors ashore. Each ship has a 1,000-bed capacity and is manned by military medical personnel drawn from the active duty and reserve forces. Pentagon officials have stressed that many of the reserve medical personnel that would be called up to staff mobile hospitals or Mercy and Comfort would be partially pulled from civilian medical facilities.

“The big challenge isn’t the availability of these inventories, it’s the medical professionals. All of those doctors and nurses either come from our medical treatment facilities or they come from the reserves, which means civilians,” Esper told USNI.

“What I don’t want to do is take reservists from a hospital where they are needed just to put them on a ship to take them somewhere else where they’re needed.”