48-year-old reservist ID’d as military’s eighth COVID-19 death

The Army Reserve has identified the military’s eighth COVID-19 death, a 48-year-old reservist from Kentucky.

Sgt. 1st Class Mike A. Markins, of Vine Grove, died Thursday at the Baptist Health Hardin Hospital in Elizabethtown, Ky., from complications related to COVID-19, Army Reserve spokesman Lt. Col. Simon Flake said in a statement Tuesday.

Markins’s death was first noted in the Pentagon’s Monday update of its online chart of COVID-19 cases connected to the department, but his identity was not released until Tuesday.

Markins first served in the Air Force on active-duty from 1990 to 1997 and then joined the Army Reserve in 2000, Flake said.

He had also been a full-time civilian employee of the Army Reserve since 2001, working as a military technician, Flake added.

His last position in the Army Reserve was as a mechanical maintenance supervisor with the 100th Training Division (Leader Development), and his last position as a military technician was as a heavy mobile equipment repairer with the 81st Readiness Division’s Equipment Concentration Site-63, according to the statement. Both positions were located at Fort Knox, Ky.

Markins is the fifth member of the Army Reserve to die from COVID-19. Two Guardsmen have also been killed by the virus.

So far, the Pentagon has only reported one coronavirus death from someone on active duty. Navy Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., a 41-year-old aviation ordnanceman, died in April after being one of more than 1,000 sailors from the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier who contracted the virus.

As of Monday, the Pentagon reported a total of 65,657 cases of COVID-19 connected to the department.

That includes 45,246 cases among service members, 30,450 of whom have recovered and 613 of whom have been hospitalized over the course of the pandemic.

There have also been 10,109 cases among civilians, 6,034 cases among dependents and 4,268 cases among contractors. There have been 59 civilian deaths, seven dependent deaths and 22 contractor deaths, according to Monday’s figures.