Great job by these volunteers:
As U.S. troops everywhere are increasingly required to wear masks to ward off coronavirus, a group of volunteers has begun churning out cloth coverings to make up for shortages nearly two months into the pandemic in South Korea.
The volunteers, including civilians, military spouses and even some soldiers, set up an assembly line operation at the arts and crafts center Tuesday on Camp Humphreys, which is the main Army garrison on the divided peninsula.
The morale, welfare and recreation division has provided more than 500 yards of fabric, thread, elastic and sewing machines, said Kelly Schmidt, one of the main organizers and the wife of Eighth Army Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Schmidt.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
For the fifth straight day another person affiliated with USFK has tested positive for coronavirus, however only 2 of the 19 infections have been uniformed servicemembers:
An American citizen working for U.S. Forces Korea’s Camp Humphreys tested positive for the new coronavirus Friday, the 19th confirmed case for the USFK community.
USFK said an American construction worker working for the military camp was diagnosed with COVID-19 in the day.
According to USFK, the U.S. citizen last visited Camp Humphreys, the USFK headquarters in Pyeongtaek, some 70 kilometers south of Seoul, and has since been under self-quarantine at his home for having been in contact with another coronavirus patient.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Via reader tip comes this odd story of USFK apparently pulling a fast one on a Korean lab testing people for the coronavirus:
A Seoul-based lab tested 72 American troops positive for the novel coronavirus, but the US military in Korea said they belonged to soldiers stationed elsewhere, a local report said Sunday.
A US hospital at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, where the US military here is headquartered, sent clinical specimens to the lab, and it shared the results with the city of Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, as it was bound by law to do so.
The city pressed the US Forces Korea for more details, but it only confirmed that those diagnosed with COVID-19 were US troops on duty elsewhere and not in Korea.
The local report said the specimens sent to the lab for testing were all numbered, rather than named, so the examinees were not identified.
Upon learning the news, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered every lab in the country not to run virus tests on unidentifiable samples.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but but what doesn’t make sense to me is that USFK has been stating that the hospital on Camp Humphreys can do its own coronavirus testing. The hospital can supposedly do up to 80 tests a day so has it reached maximum testing capacity by also testing soldiers from outside of USFK?
The article also says that the city wants every soldier, family member, DOD civilian, and contractor living off-post in Pyeongtaek be tested for the coronavirus. How come the city isn’t forcing every Korean in Pyeongtaek to be tested? Why just USFK personnel? Are they saying USFK personnel are somehow more susceptible to be infected by the coronavirus compared to a Korean? This seems discriminatory to me.
With most of the uniformed servicemembers staying on base, the amount of contractors, DOD civilians, and Korean employees that live off base continue to be the biggest risk of infection:
An American contractor who works at Osan was confirmed to have coronavirus on Saturday, the military said, raising the number of infections affiliated with U.S. Forces Korea to 18.
It is the second case in as many days for Osan, which has gone on partial lockdown to prevent the virus from spreading further. The contractor, who last visited the air base on Wednesday, is in isolation at his off-base residence as directed by South Korean and U.S. military medical personnel, USFK said in a press release Saturday.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but only two uniformed personnel have tested positive of the 18 USFK coronavirus cases.
