The Department of Defense reported close to 1,800 new COVID-19 cases this week -- double last week's new cases.
The vast majority of this week's new cases -- true since the very early days of COVID-19 reporting -- are among active-duty troops. This week, 1,149 additional active-duty service members tested positive for COVID-19.
The Army's rate of new infections has spiked in recent weeks, beginning with an outbreak among two of its training battalions at Fort Benning in Georgia. Since that outbreak at the beginning of June -- which the Army is declining to characterize as an outbreak -- the Army alone has reported 1,159 new cases of COVID-19.
The Department of Defense lifted travel restrictions for military installations in 38 states and the District of Columbia on June 8, allowing service members to travel away from their base installations for the first time since the beginning of March.
Those "green-lighted" locations were required to meet certain criteria before the DoD allowed travel to, from and through those places to resume -- including removal of shelter-in-place orders or other travel restrictions, a 14-day downward trajectory of flu-like and COVID-19-like symptoms, and a 14-day downward trajectory of new COVID-19 cases or positive tests.
The lifting of travel restrictions at these locations is supposedly conditional -- if conditions within these states change to the degree that criteria are no longer being met, those states can be removed from the list of green-lighted locations. Thus far, the Pentagon has not done so with any of the 38 states or the District of Columbia.
Across the United States, the COVID-19 death toll has now surpassed that of World War I.
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