First COVID-era recruits sent to Keesler Air Force Base graduate from basic training
Keesler Air Force Base graduated its first class of recruits from basic training Friday and will continue to be used as an extension site through the summer to help the military contend with the limitations created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Air Force leaders said.
Keesler received its first 60 recruits in June. Those men and women would have normally reported to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for eight-and-a-half weeks of basic training with hundreds of other recruits. The response to the pandemic, with social distancing required in barracks and dining halls, however, prompted the Air Force to seek other basic training sites.
Since March, when the pandemic led to widespread shutdowns, the Air Force has trained 8,700 recruits, almost all of them at Lackland. Each recruit was tested for COVID-19 as they arrived.
Of those, 200 tested positive, a “two percent positive rate over approximately four months of training,” said Maj. Gen. Andrea D. Tullos, commander of Second Air Force, which oversees basic training for enlisted airmen.
Tullos said once a recruit tested positive they were either given medical attention or placed in quarantine. About 60 percent of the recruits who tested positive were asymptomatic, she said.
“All of those trainees who tested positive have since returned to training and none have required hospitalization,” Tullos said.
Keesler has received about 60 new recruits a week since June, and about 340 are currently there in various stages of basic training, said base spokesman Lt. Jantzen Floate. Fifty new airmen from the class of 60 graduated basic training during a ceremony on the base drill field where social distancing could be maintained. Families were not allowed to attend due to the coronavirus, Floate said.
“To compensate for that, the graduations are live-streamed to the USAF Basic Military Training Facebook page and YouTube page so the families and friends can watch their airmen and children graduate,” Floate said in an email. “Following graduation, the airmen will attend technical training here at Keesler to eliminate travel risk due to COVID.”
The base did not immediately know what kept the other 10 recruits from graduating with their class.
The Air Force had previously said it would need a few weeks to see if recruits could get the same basic training experience at Keesler that they would at Lackland to determine if it would continue training there.
“We will continue bringing 60 recruits per week to Keesler until the end of this fiscal year, with our last shipment scheduled for the 29th of September,” Tullos said.
The pandemic initially had the Air Force reduce the number of new recruits it was moving through training from about 800 recruits a week to 450, a deep cut that leadership had initially warned could lead to the service missing its personnel target.
But the pandemic’s impact on the economy has resulted in a larger number of current Air Force personnel choosing to remain in the military, which will help offset the reduction in recruits.
“Our headquarters has adjusted our targets” for the number of new airmen the command needed to deliver in fiscal year 2020, Tullos said. “We started at 38,000, we’re down at about 35,500 - what that actually accounts for is that we are retaining above historic norms.”
Tullos said the Air Force is still weighing whether it will need to continue running expanded basic training at Keesler in October.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 4:16 PM.
