While COVID-19 sweeps the south, the army discovers that it is immune.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is facing a significant COVID-19 challenge as infection rates soar across the South and Southeast, where most of the service’s installations are located. And now the disease is having a major impact on the Army’s second-largest installation, according to a briefing obtained by Yahoo News.

The briefing, dated July 20 and scheduled for senior officials at Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the 101st Airborne Division, shows that that day, approximately one in five infantrymen, approximately a thousand infantrymen in total, in one of the 3 team the department’s infantry brigade combat teams were not available for training , either because they had tested positive in the COVID-19 matrix or because they had been in contact with someone who might have had the disease.

“There has been an impact” on the army of the coronavirus outbreak in the areas of the country where the maximum infantry soldiers are, Lt. General Scott Dingle, an army surgeon, said Wednesday in an online U.S. Army deal. “We also revel in the same things [as the surrounding communities], but not in very giant numbers.”

As of July 31, there were 9,276 bodies of active-duty workers with COVID-19 (an increase of approximately 400 in 48 hours). However, since the Department of Defense prohibits the military from publishing the number of instances in an individual unit or facility, it is critical to judge how the branch is handling this summer’s strong construction in instances in states such as Texas and North Carolina, home to the other two military-populated top-populated posts.

Lt. Col. Charles Barrett, a spokesman for the 101st, which has almost 20,000 soldiers and is one of the Army’s most storied formations, said the division is seeing “a slow, steady increase” in cases, but was faring better than the communities around Fort Campbell.

The on-the-spot construction at Fort Campbell, which occurs when the 101 brigades prepare for primary education events, has sparked a series of social media posts of infantry soldiers accusing the department of not doing enough for COVID-19 infantrymen, the coronavirus disease. In an interview with Yahoo News, 101 commander Major General Brian Winski questioned the allegations, which struck TerminalCWO, a Facebook account that provides a voice to grieving infantrymen and is conducted through an unnamed army NCO.

Noting that “we have not yet had a single soldier requiring hospitalization by COVID,” Winski stated that he was “truly convinced” that the department complied with all the rules of its senior headquarters in the 18th Airborne Corps, the U.S. Army Force Command. And the department. Pentagon, as well as with the remedy “parameters” established through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But messages on TerminalCWO’s Facebook page indicated that some 101 commanders were reluctant to allow infantrymen to be examined because they did not need to lose a large number of quarantine soldiers in primary school exercises. “Everyone has health problems or contacts COVID and is told through orders not to run tests to worry about wasting quarantined staff,” a sign said.

Winski said such rules are not a policy of division, but he promised to investigate. “For other people who touch it, as well as others, that’s what they hear, and we want to fix it,” he said, adding that he tended to “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Anyone with coVID-19 symptoms is expected to promptly notify their chain of command and quarantine it, according to Winski. “If they knew that contact we know now is positive, it would warrant a test,” he said. “If they’re just symptomatic, we keep them quarantined and see if the symptoms persist, and if they do, it would warrant a test. Otherwise, we would keep them in symptomatic or asymptomatic quarantine for 14 days, so if they had, I would continue their course.”

A soldier who tests positive for COVID-19 is placed in isolation. The 101st also uses a sort of precautionary quarantine called judicious preventative measures, or JPM, for soldiers who have vague symptoms or who might have come into contact with someone with the disease. Leaders use their own judgement as to whether to place a soldier in JPM, which typically means staying home for no more than a couple of days, at which point they decide whether the soldier needs to move to quarantine until they can get tested or be cleared to go back to work, according to Barrett.

Other social media posts claimed that the division was not planning to test every soldier prior to a large off-site training exercise. That claim is incorrect and is likely a misunderstanding, according to division officials, who said 100 percent of the soldiers slated to deploy on the training rotation are being tested, but in batches of 10.

Winski, the department’s commander, attributed the maximum number of court cases to a “misunderstanding,” but stated that there could be a de facto core for some of them. “Every time there’s a wave of worry, there’s something,” he says.

But overall, Facebook posts illustrate what Barrett said was a point of anxiety among infantrymen and their families about the pandemic that is even greater than that associated with long-term fighting deployments. “COVID has created a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear,” he said.

Some of the demanding situations of 101 in this regard are typical of those facing the army as a whole, adding how to balance the desire to remain in a fighting position with the desire of troops and their families, and how to remain loose virus services in areas where COVID-19 is booming and the local government is less attentive than the army to public fitness boards.

The stress in the 101 in COVID-19 is increased by the fact that two of the division’s 3 infantry brigade combat groups (formations of several battalions of up to 5,000 infantrymen each) are scheduled to move on to the army’s first soft infantry education at Fort Polk, La., over the next two months. The division’s 2nd Combat Team Brigade is scheduled to begin its rotation a month next week, followed by the 1st Combat Equipment Brigade in September.

With the maximum number of armies sets no longer deployed in combat zones, a school rotation is occasionally the ultimate critical occasion in a one- to two-year company, battalion, or brigade commando, and is preceded by many weeks of education in brigade combat. Team house station.

But the army’s quarantine policies mean that a soldier suffering symptoms like COVID-19, to mention a proven case of the disease, can have a domino effect that only leaves that soldier out of action, and many others for up to 14 days. Interviewed through Yahoo News, a young enlisted soldier said that a “false positive” on the 101st Brigade’s fighting team resulted in “almost a part of the company,” about 60 infantrymen, being limited to neighborhoods.

These policies make some commanders reluctant to allow their infantrymen to be evaluated, for the concern of wasting vital parts of their quarantined education during box education that takes position before the rotation in Fork Polk, according to various messages posted on TerminalCWO’s Facebook page. One moment the BCT soldier wrote that his unit had been informed: “You cannot pass directly to medical personnel if you revel in the symptoms of COVID-19 because you will be quarantined immediately and we cannot lose people.”

The young soldier enlisted in 1 BC stated that the commanders aimed to bring as much infantry as possible to the box to train. “They looked for numbers more than anything else, ” he said. “They weren’t so concerned about the suitability of the infantrymen.”

However, he said his chain of command forced infantrymen to see a doctor if they felt sick. “In the brigade, they need you to get tested,” he said.

But one moment, Junior enlisted in the first BCT soldier, when asked if some commanders were reluctant to allow infantry soldiers to be screened for COVID-19, said “this is the case,” adding that a recent education exercise, his chain of command had waited several days. before sending back the garrison of infantrymen fallen on the ground.

Winski stated that the department has a top priority in every educational rotation at Fort Polk. “We need everything we need for infantry soldiers to be part of it, because it is a vital educational occasion and a just environment reproduced [with] a committed opposing force, committed actors representing civilians on the battlefield and the host country’s security forces. Matrix However, he said, the department will ensure that no infantry soldiers using COVID-19 deploy at Fort Polk.

Turns out the terrain is the safest position for the troops lately. According to the slideshow received through Yahoo News on July 20, the Division’s Combat Team Brigade, which has been least affected by the virus, is its third BCT, the maximum of which has spent the past few months dividing between operations in southwest and east africa. In contrast, the maximum training affected was the 1st BCT, which had 927 infantrymen unavailable due to the virus, adding 82 lone infantry soldiers and 263 quarantined symptomatic infantrymen.

The figures appear to verify Winski’s statement that the maximum COVID-19 cases in the division, based on studies of Fort Campbell’s nine touch-tracking teams, come from social interactions outside of business hours, i.e. in bars and restaurants, not education or deployments. Array Fort Campbell stretches on both sides of the Kentucky-Tennessee border and is just 60 miles from Nashville’s nightlife, which has become a COVID-19 “red zone” in recent weeks since it reopened.

The construction in instances in Campbell “coincides with the openings of the city and county” in the surrounding communities, Winski said, adding that the fact through many infantry soldiers and their families during the Fourth of July weekend was also a factor.

But beyond encouraging the use of the mask and outdoor social estrangement (and strengthening those activities for infantrymen in office), the division’s leaders are reluctant to put their troops back into the kind of lockdown that characterized the early months of the war. pandemic, when all education and movement was cancelled. “We cannot move on to the site shelter protocols that existed in April 2020 where only the must-have leaders had to provide the service,” Colonel Robert Born, commander of 1 BCT, said in a video posted on his unit’s Facebook page.

Winski stated that the relative youth of infantrymen in an infantry department meant that Nashville’s brilliant lighting fixtures would contain a call. “That’s where young people need to go,” he says.

In fact, until the last buildup of cases, many infantrymen did not take seriously the risk of a pandemic, according to a first soldier enlisted through the BCT. “We all mock COVID-19 by saying how high the survival rate is,” he said, adding that the attitude of many young troops was “not so bad if you have a smart immune system, won.” I didn’t hurt you much.

But in June the brigade’s dining facility was temporarily closed after a soldier who works there tested positive. Then “cases just started popping up randomly, here, there and all over the place,” he said. “I think we’re taking it a little bit more seriously now.”

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