Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce that all active-duty American troops will be required to take the Covid-19 vaccine sometime this week.
QUICK FACTS:
- Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary will announce that all active-duty troops will be required to be vaccinated, according to CNN.
- The announcement will be made “as soon as this week,” following Biden’s “directive that the military examine how and when it could make that happen.”
- It was Austin’s “inclination is towards making the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory.”
- Defense Secretary Austin could seek a presidential waiver making the vaccine be administered to troops even “before full approval by the Food and Drug Administration” (FDA).
- “A Pentagon decision and recommendation on how to proceed could come this week,” reports CNN.
BACKGROUND:
- The mandatory vaccine comes even though recent studies cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show 74% of individuals infected with the delta coronavirus variant were vaccinated, adding to doubts about the effectiveness of the gene-based vaccine.
- Moreover, 12 of the 13 countries on the Johns Hopkins list of most vaccinated also appear as “high” or “very high” on the CDC Covid-19 travel risk chart.
