The Navy has become the third U.S. military service branch to grant a religious exemption for the coronavirus vaccine, though the approval rate for such requests remains a fraction of 1%.

One sailor in the Individual Ready Reserve had a religious exemption conditionally approved, though this person will need to get fully vaccinated if they’re called up to active-duty or reserve status, according to a Navy release. Additionally, the Marines have now granted six religious exemptions after having received 3,595 requests, which marks a 0.16% approval rate, according to a Thursday press release, though the number of approvals was three in the branch’s last update.

Those seven service members, combined with nine airmen, make up everyone in the military who has been approved for a religious exemption so far, even though there have been more than 16,800 requests.

Each of the three branches has also begun discharging those who have refused the vaccine. 247 active-duty sailors and one reserve, 640 Marines, and 160 airmen have been discharged for not getting the vaccine, while the Army, which has not granted any religious exemptions, has said it will start separations “immediately” but has yet to release data indicating they’ve begun. (Read more from “Navy Grants First Religious Vaccine Exemption; 640 Marines Discharged Over Vaccine Refusal” HERE)

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In late October, Phil Teuscher’s supervisor showed up at his office at the Navy’s top weapons testing base to let him know his name was on a list of thousands of base personnel who had failed to acknowledge receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

In August, all branches of the U.S. military gave its service members and civilian employees an ultimatum: Get the vaccine or face being fired. At the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California, the remote base where Teuscher has worked for 20 years, the first part of the mandate required all personnel to officially acknowledge receipt of the directive. The next step was a signed statement saying whether they have received a shot.

But Teuscher, 58, and many others who work for the Navy on and around the base have refused to comply with either directive. Using an online messaging app, Teuscher started connecting with other like-minded China Lake workers pushing back against the requirement. The group quickly grew to more than 300 participants, all deeply concerned about receiving the vaccine or outright refusing it. Each day at lunchtime, dozens of workers gather outside the base to protest the mandate.

Some employees connected to the base, all of whom require security clearances to work there, are pointing to underlying health problems they believe the vaccine could exacerbate while others cite religious exemptions. Teuscher, a production manager for a highly sophisticated missile program at the base’s Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, or NAWCWD, is not making either claim. Instead, he’s choosing to fight the legality of the mandate on principle. . .

But the Navy faces its own dilemma as the deadlines loom. With roughly 10% of the base’s highly educated and trained personnel refusing the shot, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain all the classified weapons and their testing operations in top working order if all resisters are fired. (Read more from “Vaccine Holdouts at Key Military Bases Pose Staffing Dilemma” HERE)

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