A senior military official said Wednesday that a third of service members have rejected the coronavirus vaccine.
During a hearing in the House on the response of the Armed Forces to COVID-19, a member of the Ranking of the Armed Services Committee Rep. Mike Rogers
Michael (Mike) Dennis Rogers Night Defense: One-third of service members decline coronavirus vaccine | Biden to take executive action in response to hack of Wind Winds US and Japan reach cost-sharing agreement DOD says nearly a third of service members decline COVID-19 vaccine Night Defense: Pentagon and Congress appoint panel members to rename confederate bases The military approves 20 more coronavirus vaccination teams MORE (R-Ala) asked Major General Jeff Taliaferro, Deputy Director of Operations, what percentage of service members have refused to receive the vaccine.
“I think our initial view – and this is, of course, very early data – is that acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds territory and, of course, vary by different groups,” he said. Taliaferro.
Rogers followed up by asking if service members who were not vaccinated were deployable.
Taliaferro stated that unvaccinated service members were deployable, and said the “services and orders” that have been created over the past year have allowed the Armed Forces to operate in a “COVID environment.”
Major General Steven Nordhaus confirmed at the same hearing that the vaccines were voluntary for the military.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asked the Department of Defense (DoD) in January to help distribute and administer coronavirus vaccines at FEMA sites, with up to 3,700 troops waiting to help with vaccinations. .
However, so far the Department of Defense has not revealed how many members of the service have been vaccinated. In early February, the Military Times reported that the Department of Defense has established a policy of not reporting branch affiliations of those who have received the vaccine.
Pentagon officials had previously insisted he was unaware of how many members of the service had refused to receive the vaccine, as he does not have a system to track that information because the program is voluntary.
“It’s not the kind of thing we’re following centrally here [the office of the secretary of Defense] it has a database from which we can only extract. That’s not the case right now, ”Kirby told reporters earlier this month.
DoD has also become a policy for not reporting branch affiliations of those who have received the vaccine, the Military Times reported in early February.
On Wednesday, Kirby later withdrew claims that officials were hiding information and said the Department of Defense does not have a centralized system to monitor how many members of the service have rejected the vaccine.
“We do not have a system in place for each of the services to track specific data with respect to those people who, for whatever reason, are refusing or postponing the vaccine.”
He said House hearing officials cited extensive data on vaccine acceptance rates that “reflect” trends in American society, and that officials went on to say that these are not data that specifically follows .
He also insisted that the Pentagon is not trying to hide information about the number of troops who decide not to get vaccinated.
“No one hides the data,” Kirby said. “There would be no reason to hide the data when we can certainly tell you exactly how many people receive the vaccines.”
Ellen Mitchell contributed
– Updated at 6:01 p.m.