Approximately one-third of the U.S. military has refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a Pentagon official said in a report on Wednesday.
Air Force Major General Jeff Taliaferro, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional panel that “acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds of the territory,” according to the Daily Beast.
Although the vaccine is “clearly safe for the military,” soldiers need education “to help them understand the benefits” of the vaccines, he told the House Armed Services Committee.
In total, the Department of Defense vaccinated 147,000 military personnel and 359,000 received the first dose, said Robert Salesses, a Pentagon officer.
Those who refused can still be sent, said Taliaferro.
“We demonstrated last year that we are fully capable of operating in a COVID environment,” he said, according to Inside Defense.
Officials said they expected all Defense Department personnel – which also includes civilians and contractors – to be vaccinated in late July or early August, the website said.
At least 235,258 people in the department were infected with COVID-19 last year, according to a Military.com count, with many of the worst outbreaks taking place on Navy ships – including the USS Theodore Roosevelt, where hundreds of sailors caught the bug last year.
The military acceptance rate of the vaccine is on a par with the general population of the United States, according to a study by the Journal of Social Science & Medicine, which found that 31% of the general population does not plan to be vaccinated.
A previous study found that up to 51 percent of Americans would refuse injections.
A Pentagon representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.