Attributed to Department of Defense Press Secretary Alyssa Farah:
"As we continue to grapple with the novel nature of COVID19, we are constantly assessing and adapting not only how we respond to combating the virus, but also how we share critical public health information with our communities. Therefore, the Department of Defense has issued department-wide guidance to ensure continued public reporting of cases of COVID19 positive DOD personnel through the responsible military service. The services will each provide a daily public update. Additionally, the Department of Defense will continue to offer a public daily update of the full number of cases in all services and of civilians, contractors and dependents.
In keeping with our commitment to transparency, we will assiduously continue to make the public aware of the presence of any potential new COVID-19 outbreaks within our base communities. Base commanders are instructed to continue to work with local community health officials to share information on base community cases. As we confront this growing crisis, and out of a concern for operational security with regard to readiness, we will not report the aggregate number of individual service member cases at individual unit, base or Combatant Commands. We will continue to do our best to balance transparency in this crisis with operational security."
For more information about the DOD response to COVID-19, visit this page.