AF sees recruits’ cases of virus rise

Coronavirus cases have accelerated among Air Force recruits in San Antonio since the service ramped up testing five weeks ago, including a recent spike of 13 cases in one week.

So far, a system of isolating positive cases and quarantining small groups developed at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland has allowed basic training there to continue.

A cumulative total of 48 recruits have tested positive, with most recovering and re-entering training, but 13 of those cases were discovered in the week ending June 22, the latest period covered by updates provided by the Air Education and Training Command.

The command said increased testing of all recruits on the base began May 19 and resulted “in a correlating uptick of positive cases.” Prior to universal screening, AETC had tested only recruits who showed symptoms when screened upon arrival at Lackland.

The first infection by the virus of a military training instructor, or MTI, at Lackland was confirmed June 23, but the Air Force said it didn’t have a number when asked if any of the instructor’s family had tested positive.

“The safety measures we have in place allowed for quick action to get the MTI the care needed as well as prompted the immediate start of contact tracing to protect and isolate potentially exposed populations,” AETC spokeswoman Marilyn Holliday said in an emailed response to questions. “All who may have had contact have been placed into quarantine as a necessary safety measure.”

Even with the recent spike, Air Force basic training has had fewer cases when compared with other

services. Both AETC and the 59th Medical Wing said most of the recruits turning up positive had shown no symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, which has killed 126,000 Americans. No airman has died of the disease, but one Air Force dependent and three civilians working on Air Force installations have.

A spokesman for the medical wing, Kiley Keenzel, said those at Lackland who had symptoms so far have not been sick enough to be hospitalized.

Faced with the threat of outbreaks that could cripple or even shut down basic training at Lackland, the medical wing in March developed a plan that required new recruits to be isolated from all other personnel on the base for two weeks after arriving, Some 7,260 trainees have gone though the “restriction of movement” process since March 17, receiving instruction far from other personnel, wearing protective face coverings and sleeping farther apart.

They then go through regular basic training in groups of 40 to 60 to allow social distancing. Those in the group can be quarantined if one of the cohort tests positive and tracing finds that they were in close proximity.

The Navy and Marines briefly shut down their training pipelines in late March but have since restarted them. The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, in April called coping with the virus the “new abnormal” as the nation awaits a vaccine, something not expected to occur this year.

The Air Force also created a second basic training facility at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Miss., during the first week of April. Like recruits at Lackland, flights of 60 trainees will undergo a shortened version of boot camp — six weeks, rather than 8½ prior to the pandemic — and remain at Keesler for their technical training. No one there has tested positive.

Recruits at Lackland train for seven weeks, and “graduation standards remain unchanged, but blocks of training have been adjusted to deliver more values-based content and academic instruction upfront” while in the restriction of movement phase, said Holliday, the AETC spokeswoman.

“Activities requiring increased physical exertion and specialized training infrastructure occur later in the training schedule,” she said.

The decision to add Keesler to the mix of basic training was historic because Lackland had been the sole location for that task since 1968, but commanders say the idea has worked well, and they will keep the installation in Mississippi as a second recruit hub at least through the end of September. It could run “for as long