Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: The Pentagon formally dropped its Covid vaccination mandate on Tuesday, but the new memo signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also gives commanders some discretion in how and whether to deploy troops who have not vaccinated.
Pentagon stance on covid vaccine
According to the Arab News, Austin’s memo widely anticipated ever since legislation signed into law on December 23 gave him 30 days to rescind a mandate. The Defense Department has already stopped all related personnel actions, such as discharging troops who refused a shot.
Austin said in the memo that “The Department could continue to promote and encourage covid vaccination for all service members,” “Vaccination enhances operational readiness or protects the force.”
Austin said that the commanders have the authority to maintain unit readiness or a healthy force. He added that other department policies, including mandates for other vaccines, remain in the area. That includes, he said that “the ability of commanders to consider, as appropriate, a individual immunization status of personnel in making deployment, assignment, or other operational decisions, including when vaccination has required for travel to, or entry into, a foreign nation.”
The contentious political problem, which divided America, forced more than 8,400 troops out of the army for refusing to obey a lawful order when they declined to get the vaccine. Thousands of others sought religious or medical exemptions, and Austin’s memo ends those exemption requests.
Austin, who instituted a mandate in August 2021 after the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer vaccine and as the coronavirus pandemic raged, was staunch in his desire to maintain it, insisting a vaccine was necessary to protect the health of the force. He or other defense leaders argued that for decades troops, particularly those deployed overseas, has required to get as many as 17 different vaccines. No other vaccine mandates were affected by the new law.
