An American service member participating in an annual combined exercise with South Korea has tested positive for the new coronavirus, officials said Thursday.

The South Korea-US Combined Forces Command (CFC) "confirms that one individual recently tested positive for COVID-19 while working in a combined headquarters location supporting CCPT," its spokesman Col. Lee Peters said in a statement.

CCPT refers to the computer-simulated Combined Command Post Training, an annual exercise between South Korea and the United States that kicked off Monday for a nine-day run.

The individual was found to have contracted COVID-19 after coming into contact with another person who tested positive earlier.

It was not immediately clear how many people came into contact with the newly confirmed patient.

Despite the case, "CFC will continue with its combined training as scheduled while continuing to enforce its mitigation measures that protect our force and out mission," Peters said.

With the fourth wave of the pandemic raging across South Korea, Seoul and Washington have decided to go ahead with the exercise in a scaled-back manner, with no outdoor drills and the size of troops involved minimized.

Peters said the CFC has "remained aligned" with the South Korean government's COVID-19 mitigation measures "including mandatory mask wearing in combined facilities, training with minimal essential personnel only, operating in distributed locations, maximizing virtual meetings and random testing of all participants."

As of Tuesday, USFK had reported 1,241 coronavirus infections among its affiliated population. (Yonhap)