JBLM announces record number of positive COVID-19 cases in July

Joint-Base Lewis-McChord has seen a record number of cases of COVID-19 for one month. They expect to far exceed the number of cases they’ve seen by the end of July, said Lt. Col. Luke Mease, chief of preventive medicine at Madigan Army Medical Center.

The actual number of cases from Joint-Base Lewis McChord stopped being reported in April after the Defense Department ordered leadership not to report cases for individual service members.

According to the March 30 Stars and Stripes report: “The order issued by Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday is meant to protect operational security at the Defense Department’s global installations, Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement Monday. He said Defense Department leaders worried adversaries could exploit such information, especially if the data showed the outbreak impacted U.S. nuclear forces or other critical units.”

More than 27,000 military personnel and others had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of July 15.

When a service member living on base is diagnosed with COVID-19, the case is reported to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. Service members living off base who test positive are reported to their home counties. But those numbers are not included in the publicly available data.

On the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department website it says, “The Department of Defense asked us to not publicly report numbers for Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The Pentagon said this information could be “a risk to operational security and could jeopardize operations.”

In a Facebook Live Town Hall, Mease said about one-third of the cases diagnosed in July were from people who had been traveling or were in contact with people who traveled within the continental United States. Other cases were related to off-duty gatherings of family and friends, Mease said.

Mease added that many of the people diagnosed showed only mild symptoms at first.

“Meaning they have some symptoms but don’t seek care until those worsen or they persist and last a little longer,” Mease said. “That’s concerning because people are likely spreading the disease during that time where they have the symptoms but haven’t been diagnosed.”

Col. George Leonard, Madigan’s chief medical officer, said if service members completely complied with preventive measures, such as wearing face coverings and socially distancing, they could significantly reduce the spread of the disease.

Leonard added that more testing is only accounting for a small percentage of the increase in cases and said it’s more significant that JBLM’s positivity rating is going up.

This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 5:08 PM.