The U.S. Secretary of Defense announced in a memo Monday that he will be seeking approval from President Joe Biden to require all members of the military to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by mid-September.
The mandate’s deadline is flexible, pending the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of at least one of the available coronavirus vaccines. Health officials say the Pfizer-BioNTech shot is expected to be approved early next month.
The announcement comes as coronavirus cases are rising among military members, thanks to the highly contagious delta variant.
“I will seek the President’ s approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon FDA licensure, whichever comes first,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in the memo sent to the Force. “I will not hesitate to act sooner or recommend a different course to the President if I feel the need to do so.”
If Biden grants the approval for the mandate, the COVID-19 vaccine will be added to the list of shots military members are already required to receive upon joining. Depending on age and location of deployment, service members can be required to get as many as 17 different vaccines.
Austin added that military officials “will have more to say about this as implementation plans are fully developed.” For now, what remains unclear is what kind of consequences — if any — military members will face if they refuse to get vaccinated.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Monday that he won’t “speculate” on what those consequences might be just yet.
But military officials have said in the past that refusal to receive any mandated vaccine “could constitute failure to obey an order, and may be punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” the Associated Press reported.
If the COVID-19 vaccine mandate mirrors that of the mandatory Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program that began in 1998, then some military members who refuse the shot may choose to leave the service or face consequences like “lost rank and pay” or “brig time” (military prison), according to Military Times.
Pentagon statements had noted that about 350 troops refused the anthrax shot between 1998 and 2000; at least 36 of them were “court martialed and hundreds left the service to avoid the vaccine,” the outlet reported. Another 149 service members “were forced out” from 2000 to 2004.
Military members with religious or medical exemptions will likely be able to avoid COVID-19 vaccination, according to the AP.
Biden announced July 29 that federal employees must get vaccinated against the coronavirus or deal with frequent testing. The “certification of vaccination” that workers must fill out says a “knowing and willful false statement on this form can be punished by fine or imprisonment or both.”
The form goes on to say, “I understand that making a false statement on this form could result in additional administrative action including an adverse personnel action up to and including removal from my position.”
It’s unclear if military members who refuse the vaccine will face similar consequences, but surveys from February showed nearly one-third of active troops were refusing the shots. A separate survey found that 53% of military families said they will not be getting vaccinated.
More than 1 million service members are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Aug. 4, according to Department of Defense data. The Army has the most fully vaccinated members, followed by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
In March, the White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said U.S. military members who are eligible to get vaccinated but refuse are “part of the problem.”
“Because by getting infected, even though you may not know it, you may be inadvertently transmitting the infection to someone else, even though you have no symptoms,” Fauci said during a virtual town hall with Blue Star Families, a nonprofit dedicated to military family issues, according to CNBC. “In reality, like it or not, you’re propagating this outbreak. So instead of being part of the solution, you are innocently and inadvertently being part of the problem by not getting vaccinated.”
“You’ve got to think of your own health, which is really very important,” Fauci added, “but you got to think about your societal obligation, including people close to you personally as well as other members of families of other individuals.”
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