The French Navy Sorties Against COVID-19

There are different responses a navy can take in respond to COVID-19.

You can:

1. Assume readiness risk by pulling ships in, decrease manning/training/etc for a few weeks or months to enable social distancing and stop COVID-19 was spreading crud-like through your battleforce ships.

2. Continue as before because those readiness reports and stop light PPT won't wright themselves.

3. Deploy what you must for critical presence missions, hard operational necessity, or to help the fight against COVID-19.

With our hospital ships MERCY and COMFORT, we have done a bit domestically with #3.

The French don't have hospital ships ... but they are doing something very interesting with their big-deck amphibs in line with #3, via David Axe:

The French navy has mobilized all three of its Mistral-class amphibious assault ships and is deploying them across Europe, Asia and the Americas in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The mobilization of the assault ships Mistral and Dixmude on March 25, 2020 came just five days after the French fleet sent sister vessel Tonnerre to Corsica to transport coronavirus patients to hospitals in mainland France.
...
French President Emmanuel Macron described (Operation) Resilience as an “unprecedented military operation dedicated to supporting public services and the French people in the fields of health, logistics and protection.”

Mistral will support the French territory of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The ship already was in the region for training when the government announced the pandemic-relief operation. Dixmude at the time of the announcement was in the Mediterranean Sea but will sail west to aid France’s Carribean territories.