Fort Bragg, North Carolina, officials reported Friday that two employees with connections to the installation have died of the coronavirus.

In a news release, officials said the employees were residents of Cumberland County.

"We lost two valued members of our Fort Bragg community last night," said Lt. Gen. Michael "Erik" Kurilla, commanding general of the 18th Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, in a statement released Friday. "Our thoughts and prayers are with their families in their time of loss."

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One of the individuals was a Department of the Army employee, and the other was a contractor who worked at Fort Bragg.

Officials said the deaths are the first related to the virus with a connection to Fort Bragg.

Officials said no further information will be released about the employees to respect the families and comply with Defense Department guidance.

After DoD officials issued a directive earlier this month for installations to no longer publicly report COVID-19 cases for operational security reasons, it is unknown how many cases are tied to Fort Bragg.

Before the DoD guidelines were issued, Fort Bragg reported 13 positive cases of the virus, which included Department of the Army civilians, a veteran, dependents and two service members.

Officials said most of the cases were people in isolation at their homes off post who were counted in their county of residence.

DoD leaders previously said installations would continue to report cases to local health departments.

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This article was written by Rachael Riley from The Fayetteville Observer, N.C. and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

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