The U.S. Army announced on Wednesday that they are immediately discharging service members who refuse to comply with the COVID vaccine mandate. More than 3,300 soldiers will be affected by the ordinance, making the Army the last to implement its discharge policy for COVID vaccine refusers.
According to CBN News, the Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy have already discharged active-duty troops or entry-level personnel at boot camps who refuse to take the COVID vaccine. The Army has not done so yet.
As per data coming from the Army, over 3,300 service members refused to get vaccinated against COVID. More than 3,000 soldiers have been sent official written reprimands, which implies that they are already identified in the disciplinary process and will soon be discharged if they continue to refuse the COVID shot.
The Biden administration established a federal vaccine mandate which the Pentagon has carried out to all of its service members who are either active-duty, National Guard or Reserves. The Pentagon reasoned that getting the COVID shots were critical to maintaining the health and combat readiness of the force. About 97% of all Army soldiers have received at least one shot of the COVID vaccine, while more than 3,000 have applied for medical or religious exemptions.
"Unvaccinated Soldiers present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a directive for commanders to initiate involuntary dismissals of unvaccinated soldiers, as per Fox News. "We will begin involuntary separation proceedings for Soldiers who refuse the vaccine order and are not pending a final decision on an exemption."
Wormuth added, "Army readiness depends on soldiers who are prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our nation's wars."
Meanwhile, Republican leaders have been vocally opposing the vaccine mandate for service members. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie has introduced a bill to block the vaccine mandate. He took to Twitter to share that he was "contacted by members of our voluntary military who say they will quit if the COVID vaccine is mandated."
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas also opposed the COVID vaccine mandate for the military, arguing, "Kicking thousands of young, healthy troops out of the military over the vaccine mandate hurts our national security."
The Guardian reported that the Army received 709 permanent medical exemption requests, among which only six were approved and 656 were rejected. In addition, there were 2,910 claims of permanent religious exemptions received, with 266 being rejected. None have been approved as of January 26.
In January, the Pentagon stopped enforcing President Joe Biden's COVID vaccine mandate for its civilian workers after a federal judge ordered it to temporarily freeze the policy, Stars and Stripes reported. Pentagon leaders directed officials in the Defense Department to cease "taking any further actions to implement or enforce the civilian employee vaccination" mandate, as per spokeswoman Lisa Lawrence.
The order came after U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Brown on January 21 ordered a temporary halt of the enforcement of the mandate in response to a lawsuit brought forth by the Feds for Medical Freedom group.
