Military Times:
The Defense Department will no longer require service members to get vaccinated for COVID-19, according to a memo signed Tuesday by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The move comes weeks after President Joe Biden signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, and with it a plan to rescind Austin’s August 2021 memo directing the services to create a vaccination policy.
“The Department will continue to promote and encourage COVID-19 vaccination for all Service members,” Austin wrote. “The Department has made COVID-19 vaccination as easy and convenient as possible, resulting in vaccines administered to over two million Service members and 96 percent of the force ― Active and Reserve ― being fully vaccinated.”
From early 2020 to early 2022, after the service’s mandates went into effect, 96 active and reserve service members died of COVID-19 complications. Of those, 93 were unvaccinated.