The navy secretary added that nearly 1,000 crew members have already disembarked in Guam and said that number will rise to 2,700 by Friday. About half the results from the 1,273 crew members who have been tested are back, he said, and 93 of them are positive — with seven of that group showing no symptoms — while 593 are negative.

"The long pole in the tent, of course, is getting those testing results back as we get those samples to a DOD facility for processing," the chief of naval operations, Navy Adm. Michael Gilday, told reporters. "We have people ashore that are isolated and have tested positive, we have others [ashore] that are quarantined or isolated, because they're considered to have been in close contact. And so over that 14-day restricted movement period, as they become clean, they haven't shown any symptoms, they get tested and then they're brought back on the ship."

Gilday said the Navy is working with government officials in Guam to locate additional housing — in particular, hotel rooms — for sailors coming off the aircraft carrier.

Asked whether the letter from the ship's commander, first reported by The San Francisco Chronicle, had spurred the Navy to take action, Gilday said there had "potentially" been a breakdown in communications with Capt. Crozier.

"Kind of the eye-opener for us was the fact that he wanted to move at a greater speed to get people off the ship, right?" Gilday said. "The misunderstanding, perhaps, was the requirement at speed to get people off the ship. We had been identifying spaces and getting people off the ship. We are now moving people at speed to get them off the ship."

Crozier charged in his letter that keeping the crew aboard the aircraft carrier was "an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care."

Asked about whether the Navy was failing to take care of its sailors, Modly rejected the commander's allegation.

"It's disappointing to have him say that — however, at the same time, I know that it's not true. We've been working very, very hard with the ship, with the command structure to make sure that's exactly what we're doing," said the Navy's top civilian. "It's our priority, we need those sailors to be safe, we need them to be healthy and we need that ship to be operational."

Modly said of the 94 U.S. Navy ships currently deployed, the Roosevelt is the only one with active cases on board. He added that some Navy ships in port do have coronavirus cases that number in the single digits.

Modly also said Crozier, as the aircraft carrier's commander, had acted correctly by writing a letter to express his concerns to his chain of command.

"I don't know who leaked the letter to the media," he added. "That would be something that would violate the principles of good order and discipline if he were responsible for that, but I don't know that."