The Navy has lifted its coverage of banning unvaccinated sailors from deploying as a part of the broader rollback of the navy’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
“COVID-19 vaccination standing shall not be a consideration in assessing particular person service member suitability for deployment or different operational missions,” mentioned the Navy’s administrative message saying the change, launched Thursday.
The change comes simply over a month after the Pentagon formally dropped the requirement for all service members to be vaccinated, save for a handful of medical and spiritual exemptions. That change was directed by Congress in final 12 months’s annual protection invoice that was signed into regulation within the final days of December 2022.
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The coverage does enable commanders to “implement Well being Safety Measures at any time or method deemed needed in help of operational security and effectiveness.” It additionally permits them to limit sailors’ motion “with a purpose to adjust to host nation quarantine laws.”
USNI News reported that the Navy’s high officer, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday, advised reporters Thursday that the service will proceed to watch COVID-19 infections, with a specific emphasis on new strains of the illness.
For a lot of its existence, the vaccine mandate had been a political soccer with Republicans questioning, with out proof, the efficacy and security of a vaccine the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention says is the most secure, handiest approach to forestall an infection and critical issues from COVID-19. The navy already mandates greater than a dozen different vaccines, together with the annual flu vaccine, for each recruits and repair members.
A number of lawsuits have been filed by sailors opposing the mandate and difficult the Navy’s method to reviewing the non secular exemption requests. The Supreme Courtroom dominated in March 2022 that the ocean service was allowed to reassign sailors who had refused the shot and filed exemption requests to nonoperational instructions.
Final summer time, the Pentagon accepted the Novavax vaccine, a model of the shot that didn’t use fetal tissue in its growth or manufacturing — a significant factor cited by non secular objectors.
The attorneys for the most important lawsuit towards the service mentioned that, after the Navy’s coverage change on deployment, they have been “nonetheless assessing the affect of this coverage on our Navy SEAL purchasers and greater than 4000 class members” in an announcement launched Thursday evening.
The go well with was initially filed by a bunch of Navy SEALs however later expanded to incorporate all vaccine-refusing sailors.
The authorized crew from First Liberty Institute added that it was “an encouraging step in direction of guaranteeing the Navy doesn’t proceed to discriminate towards sailors who sought non secular exemptions from the Covid vaccine requirement.”
Nonetheless, the brand new coverage hints on the risk that sailors who’re unvaccinated should face restrictions in international locations which have vaccination legal guidelines or necessities. It permits the Navy’s leaders, “if required by the host nation,” to certify “that their unit is 100% vaccinated, these disembarking have examined damaging inside the required timeframe, or that these disembarking have obtained a COVID-19 vaccine booster.”
The brand new coverage makes no point out of reinstating sailors who have been separated from the Navy for refusing the shot or when sailors who have been assigned to shore obligation amid the mandate will probably be reassigned again to an operational command. As of late November 2022, the service had separated 1,639 sailors from energetic obligation, 402 reservists, and 32 sailors who have been within the first 180 days of their naval service.
— Konstantin Toropin could be reached at konstantin.toropin@navy.com. Observe him on Twitter @ktoropin.
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