A senior military official said on Wednesday that a third of the military refused to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
During a Chamber hearing on the Armed Forces response to COVID-19, Ranking Member of the Armed Forces Committee, Representative. Mike Rogers
Michael (Mike) Dennis RogersOvernight Defense: One-third of the military refuses the coronavirus vaccine | Biden to take executive action in response to Solar Winds hack | US and Japan reach cost-sharing agreement DOD says nearly a third of service members are refusing the COVID-19 vaccine Night defense: Pentagon and Congress nominate panel members to rename confederate bases | Military approves 20 more coronavirus vaccination teams MORE (R-Wing.) Major General Jeff Taliaferro, deputy director of operations, asked what percentage of the military refused to receive the vaccine.
“I think our initial vision – and this is, of course, a very initial one – is that acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds territory and, of course, varies according to different groups,” said Taliaferro.
Rogers asked if service members who had not been vaccinated could be deployed.
Taliaferro said that non-immunized service members were deployable, saying that the “services and commands” that were created last year allowed the Armed Forces to operate in a “COVID environment”.
Major General Steven Nordhaus confirmed at the same hearing that vaccination was voluntary for the military.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in January asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to assist in the distribution and administration of coronavirus vaccines at FEMA sites, with up to 3,700 soldiers on standby to assist with immunizations.
However, the DoD has so far not revealed how many members of the service have been vaccinated. In early February, the Military Times reported that the DoD adopted a policy of not reporting branch affiliations to those who received the vaccine.
Pentagon officials had previously insisted that they did not know how many service members refused to receive the vaccine, as there is no system for tracking this information because the program is voluntary.
“It is not the kind of thing that we are monitoring centrally here, that [the office of the secretary of Defense] has a database from which we can extract. It is not the case now, ”Kirby told reporters earlier this month.
The DoD also adopted a policy of not reporting affiliations to branches of those who received the vaccine, the Military Times reported in early February.
Kirby on Wednesday rejected claims that officials are hiding information, saying again that the Department of Defense does not have a centralized system for tracking how many military personnel have refused the vaccine.
“We don’t have a system in place at each of the services to specifically track data with respect to individuals who, for whatever reason, are refusing or postponing the vaccine.”
He said that officials at the House hearing were citing extensive data on vaccine acceptance rates that “reflect” trends in American society, and that officials continued to say that it is not data that they are specifically following.
He also insisted that the Pentagon is making no attempt to hide information about the number of soldiers who are deciding not to be vaccinated.
“No one is hiding data,” said Kirby. “There would be no reason for us to hide the data, when we can certainly tell how many people exactly are getting the vaccines.”
Ellen Mitchell contributed
– Updated 18:01