Twenty sailors have been booted from the Navy for refusing the obligatory COVID-19 vaccine, the service introduced Wednesday.
The sailors — who’re the first the service has separated on account of vaccine refusal — had been all finishing preliminary coaching durations inside their first 180 days of lively responsibility on the time of separation, that means they had been thought of entry-level separations, in line with the Navy.
The Navy stated a complete of 5,268 lively responsibility and a pair of,980 Navy Reserve sailors stay unvaccinated as of Jan. 5. The service has to this point permitted eight everlasting medical exemptions, 242 momentary medical exemptions and 74 administrative exemptions for active-duty sailors.
Among these within the Navy Reserve, the service has permitted 9 momentary medical exemptions and 31 administrative exemptions.
More than 3,000 active-duty sailors have submitted spiritual exemption requests, together with 691 Navy Reserve sailors. But no spiritual exemptions have been permitted but.
However, a federal choose in Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Navy from penalizing 35 Navy SEALs and different particular forces members for rejecting the COVID-19 vaccine on account of spiritual causes.
A hospital corpsman
phases intravenous treatment for later use aboard the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort whereas the ship is moored in New York. Gamma-Rapho by way of Getty Images
“The Navy servicemembers in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect,” U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor wrote Monday. “The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”
Active responsibility sailors had till Nov. 28 to grow to be totally vaccinated in opposition to COVID-19, and sailors within the Navy Reserve had till Dec. 28 to take action.
The Navy unveiled discharge plans for sailors who rejected the COVID-19 vaccine in October, and stood up the COVID Consolidated Disposition Authority to supervise the separation course of. Sailors who stay unvaccinated and wouldn’t have an permitted exemption additionally may lose out on schooling advantages, promotions and bonus pay.
Navy leaders have stated it would seemingly take greater than six months to separate sailors unvaccinated sailors, though the majority of separations are anticipated within the first half of 2022. Even so, the service has stated it needs to maintain as many sailors as potential.
“Let me be clear up front: We want every sailor to receive the vaccine and stay Navy,” Rear Adm. James Waters III, director of army personnel, plans and coverage, advised reporters in December. “And if a sailor gets their shot, we will honor that and make every effort to retain them.”
At least 17 sailors have died on account of problems from COVID-19.
