Nov. 5 (UPI) — Ten more people associated with U.S. Forces Korea tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving in South Korea between Oct. 23 and Nov. 3, USFK announced Thursday.
According to USFK, the individuals who tested positive include five service members and five dependents who arrived on commercial or military flights.
Half of the people who tested positive did so on their first mandatory COVID-19 test before entering quarantine and the other half tested positive on the mandatory test required to exit quarantine.
All of the individuals who tested positive transferred to an isolation facility designated for confirmed COVID-19 cases at Camp Humphreys and Osan Air Base. USFK said all the transportation assets and quarantine rooms have been thoroughly cleaned.
USFK also said health professionals had determined contact tracing was “limited,” as the passengers on the flights in question were tested on arrival and immediately quarantined without interacting with anybody aside from other individuals on their flight.
On Monday, the U.S. Air Force announced that it starting doing random COVID-19 tests on flights provided by Patriot Express, a U.S. government contractor that provides worldwide service — mainly from the United States to Asia and Europe — to Armed Forces members and their families on commercial airlines.
Last week, USFK reported 13 service members had tested positive for the virus.
As of Thursday, the Department of Defense had reported 86,735 total cases in the entire department — 111 of whom died, 1,718 of whom have been hospitalized and 56,885 of whom have recovered — since the beginning of the pandemic.
That includes 58,968 cases among military service members, 13,714 among civilian DoD employees, 8,597 among dependents and 5,456 among contractors.
That case count is up from 80,100 reported Oct. 26. At that time 1,641 DoD personnel had been hospitalized and 104 had died.
