A senior military official said on Wednesday that a third of service workers have refused to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
At a House hearing on the Armed Forces response to COVID-19, Armed Services Committee member Rep. Mike Rogers
Michael (Mike) Dennis Rogers Night Defense: One Third of Service Employees Refuse Coronavirus Vaccine | Biden to take executive action in response to Solar Winds hack | US and Japan reach agreement on cost-sharing DOD says nearly a third of service members reject COVID-19 vaccine. Night Defense: Pentagon, Congress Appoints Panelists 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 the service workers refused to receive the vaccine.
“I think our initial look – and this is very early data, of course – is that the acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds area, and of course it varies by group,” said Taliaferro.
Rogers continued by asking if the unvaccinated service workers could be deployed.
Taliaferro stated that non-immunized service workers were deployable and said the “services and commands” set up over the past year have enabled the armed forces to operate in a “COVID environment.”
Major General Steven Nordhaus confirmed at the same hearing that vaccinations were voluntary for military members.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in January asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to help distribute and administer coronavirus vaccines at FEMA sites, with up to 3,700 troops standing by to assist with immunizations.
However, the DoD has not yet disclosed how many service workers have been vaccinated. In early February, Military Times reported that the DoD has made it a policy not to report industry associations of those who have received the vaccine.
Pentagon officials had previously maintained that it did not know how many service employees refused to receive the vaccine because it has no system to track that information, because the program is voluntary.
‘It’s not the kind of thing we follow centrally here, that [the office of the secretary of Defense] has a database we can just get out of. That’s not the case now, ”Kirby told reporters earlier this month.
DoD has also made it a policy not to report industry associations of those who received the vaccine, Military Times reported in early February.
Kirby came back on claims later on Wednesday that officials are hiding information, saying again that the Department of Defense does not have a centralized system to keep track of how many service employees have refused the vaccine.
“We don’t have a system for each of the services to specifically keep records of those individuals who, for any reason, refuse or delay the vaccine.”
He said officials at the House hearing cited broad data on vaccine acceptance rates that “reflects” trends in American society, and officials further said it is not data they specifically track.
He also insisted that the Pentagon make no effort to hide information about the number of troops deciding not to be vaccinated.
“Nobody is hiding data,” Kirby said. “There is no reason for us to hide data if we can tell you for sure how many people are getting the vaccines.”
Ellen Mitchell contributed
– Updated 6:01 pm