38-year-old soldier in Virginia dies of COVID-19

A 38-year-old active-duty soldier in Virginia has died of COVID-19, the Army said Wednesday, marking the service’s second active-duty death during the pandemic.

The fatality is also the third active-duty death across military branches and the military’s 15th overall when taking into account reserve forces.

Sgt. 1st Class Lisa Maria Soto, originally from Florence, S.C., died early Saturday at a civilian hospital in Hopewell, Va., from complications related to COVID-19, Fort Lee spokesperson Jefferson Wolfe said in a statement Wednesday.

Soto started her Army career as an armorer in Germany in 2001 and had combat deployments to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012, Wolfe said.

She had been assigned to Fort Lee since 2017, and her last job there was as an Advanced Individual Training Instructor with Alpha Co., 244th Quartermaster Battalion.

Soto’s death comes a little less than a month after the Army’s first active-duty COVID-19 death. Sgt. Setariki Korovakaturaga, a 43-year-old soldier stationed in Germany, died in early December while en route to the hospital, the Army said last month.

The Navy saw the military’s first active-duty death in April, when Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr. died after being one of more than 1,000 sailors from the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier who contracted the virus.

In addition to the three active-duty deaths, seven reservists and five National Guardsmen have died from the disease.

Standing at about 0.01 percent, the military’s COVID-19 fatality rate is lower than the overall U.S. rate, something defense officials attribute to being a younger, healthier group.

But like the rest of the country, the Pentagon has seen a spike of coronavirus cases in recent months as the pandemic enters what U.S. health officials warn could be the darkest phase of the crisis.

Overall, the Pentagon has reported 173,077 coronavirus cases as of Wednesday, according to a chart the department maintains on its website. That’s up from about 126,000 cases a month ago and from about 90,000 cases at the same point in November.

The total cases reported Wednesday include 111,581 in the military, 32,366 among civilians, 18,165 among dependents and 10,965 among contractors.

Among military cases, 959 service members have been hospitalized over the course of the pandemic and 73,515 have recovered.

In addition to the 15 military deaths, there have been 129 civilian deaths, nine dependent deaths and 44 contractor deaths, according to the Pentagon data.