Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka picked up additional duties last week when he was named as the city’s new logistics officer by Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Seroka runs the nation’s busiest container port and now will also coordinate efforts to provide protective equipment and other supplies to local hospitals as the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise.

Garcetti said the city will act as an intermediary, helping locate the supplies and delivering them where needed the most.

“(Seroka’s) job is to use our purchasing power, our connections at the port, with logistics, transportation, assets, information technology, and manufacturing relationships to procure critical materials that we need in this fight,” he said. “I cannot overstate how important this work is going to be to our health and to our fight ahead. By putting Gene in this role, he will save lives.”

The Port of Los Angeles is already involved in the fight against the pandemic. USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed naval hospital ship, docked at the port on March 27. The ship will handle overflow of acute trauma cases and other urgent care needs, allowing local hospitals to focus on treating Covid-19 patients.