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By: News Peddlers
United States of America (US) has discharged one hundred and three Marines for refusing to be vaccinated for COVID-19 on Thursday.
So far US has discharged not less than 30,000 service men for not accepting the COVID vaccine even after several chances to do so.
The Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered a compulsory COVID vaccine for all U.S. military personnel in August.
Following the order of compulsory COVID vaccine, a deadline was setup by the military, placing discharge as the consequence of not complying with the deadline. The Pentagon had seen the decision of refusing the vaccine as a violation of lawful order given by Austin.
ABC News had recorded the percentage of vaccinated military personnel in each service to be 95% or more, while the unvaccinated numbers not less than 30,000.
The Air Force was the first to declare the discharge of 27 airmen earlier this week, in compliance with the order.
From the recent update made available to the media by the Navy and Air Force, 5,472 sailors and 7,365 airmen have not been vaccinated because of refusal or waiting for proper documents to approve their exemption because of religious or medical reasons.
The U.S. Marine said “95% of our active-duty men of 182,500 Marines had received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, which is the lowest percentage among the military services. We have approved 1.007 medical and administrative exemptions and still processing 2,863 of the 3,144 requests made for religious reasons”.
The service men in United States are expected to receive not less than 12 vaccines, while the servicemen outside the country are expected to receive 17 depending on their region of assignment.
In an announcement made on Thursday by the Army, about 98% out of its 478,000 active soldiers had received the vaccine, remaining about 10,000 that have not.
“3,864 soldiers have rejected the vaccine entirely while about 6,263 are awaiting the processing of their requests for an exemption on religious grounds means while none have secure exemption based on this reason”. The Army said.
The Congress had passed the defence authorization bill earlier this week assuring service men who refused the vaccine an honourable discharge or a "general discharge under honourable conditions."
The Army said it will discharge none of his men that refused the vaccine but they will be “flagged” instead, meaning they won’t be promoted, must leave the Army immediately after their contact expire
Meanwhile, they will be subjected to regular COVID tests.