Nellis Air Force Base reopening to military retirees Aug. 31

Nellis Air Force Base will welcome retirees back to the base 24/7 starting Aug. 31.

For the health and safety of the base, however, retiree restrictions will remain in place for the Nellis Club, the Warrior Fitness Center and ID card renewals, base officials announced Friday.

Until renewal services reopen, the Retiree ID cards will remain valid despite their expiration dates.

The Nellis Satellite Pharmacy will resume regular operating hours Monday through Friday, also beginning Aug. 31. The pharmacy’s last weekend for refills will be this weekend.

The Mike O’Callaghan Military Medical Center remains open to all eligible beneficiaries. Nellis Air Force Base leadership, including its medical professionals, continues to monitor and assess the situation. Indications of an increase in COVID-19 on the installation or in our surrounding communities will trigger an immediate reassessment.

Base officials allowed retirees on base for the first time since April late last month, on the weekends only.

Thousands of military retirees, dependents and widows have been locked out of the base since April 10, unable to access the no-cost medication to which they are entitled. Many were subject to copays that can quickly add up to hundreds of dollars.

Nellis is in Phase Two of its reopening plan, which it re-entered last month after Southern Nevada’s “sustained increase in the number of positive COVID-19 cases,” officials said.

The base was previously in Phase Three, which it entered on June 1.

For the base to move back into Phase Three and beyond, there must be no significant change in positive COVID-19 cases, robust testing capability, hospital surge capacity and extensive tracing measures for at least two weeks, officials said.

The base has been under a public health emergency since April 3.

Although the base has declined to give the number of COVID-19 cases on base, an email obtained by the Review-Journal and dated April 23 showed that Col. Cavan Craddock, former commander of the 99th Air Base Wing, told base personnel that 1,083 tests had been administered at Nellis hospital. Fifty-one came back positive, he said.

The first case connected to the base was announced on March 19 and involved a service member from the NATO military alliance who was at the base earlier in the month for Red Flag 20-2, an air-to-air combat training exercise.

For Nellis-specific COVID-19 information, visit nellis.af.mil/COVID-19.

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @ByBrianaE on Twitter.