The first member of the Naval Special Warfare community to test positive for coronavirus is a Navy petty officer second class assigned to Naval Special Warfare, officials tell Navy Times.

It is the first positive case in the WARCOM community and on board the base, Navy Lt. Matthew Stroup, a WARCOM spokesman, told Navy Times.

“The individual is currently isolated on base and restricted in movement in accordance with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Guidelines,” according to a media release. “The other members of the group who were in close contact with the Sailor are also quarantined on base out of an abundance of caution. They remain in close contact with medical professionals at time.”

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak that has now infected more than 50 service members as of March 18 and thousands of Americans.

U.S. Special Operations Command and the Navy “are committed to taking every measure possible to protect the health of our force. We remain in close coordination with local agencies, base tenant commands, and public health authorities to ensure the well-being of our personnel and the local community.”

DoD has analyzed more than 1,500 tests so far, and total cases in the military community hit 81 as of early Thursday morning. This is a drop from Wednesday’s reported number of 89, which was a reporting error, according to a defense official who was not authorized to speak on the record about the issue.

None of the current 51 diagnosed troops are hospitalized, but more broadly, the CDC has found that 40 percent of those hospitalized for COVID-19 are in the range of age 20 to 54, which covers almost the entire age spectrum of service members.

This is a developing story. Stay with NavyTimes.com

About Howard Altman and

Howard Altman is an award-winning editor and reporter who was previously the military reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and before that the Tampa Tribune, where he covered USCENTCOM, USSOCOM and SOF writ large among many other topics.

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

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