June 2022 — MHCE Newsletter

WWW.MHCE.US Monthly Newsletter | 11
Thompson also noted efforts by the command
to care for Afghan evacuees who passed
through U.S. bases in Germany on their way
to the United States after the fall of their
country to the Taliban.
Medical staff at Landstuhl treated 391 Afghan
patients and delivered 26 babies, he said.
Thompson will head to U.S. Army Medical
Command headquarters at Fort Sam Houston
in San Antonio, Texas, said Gino Mattorano,
a spokesman for Regional Health Command-
Europe.
He will trade cities with Murray, who
previously helmed Brooke Army Medical
Center in San Antonio.
The harsh restrictions at the beginning of
the pandemic were due to concerns about a
lack of hospital beds as well as the absence
of vaccines and testing tools, which are now
available, Murray told Stars and Stripes.
Health officials will have to see whether the
virus continues to mutate into new variants.
But should that happen, they’re more
prepared than they were at the beginning of
the pandemic, he added.
“We may move back and forth on wearing
masks and having events, changing a little bit
of what we do, but I don’t think we’ll ever go
back to when we truly shut down,” Murray
said.
Murray specialized in infectious diseases at
multiple points during his career, according
to a biography provided by Regional Health
Command-Europe.
He completed a fellowship in infectious
diseases in 2002 and reviewed infection
control procedures during a deployment to
Afghanistan in 2012. He is a member of the
Infectious Diseases Society of America, a
medical association based in Arlington, Va.