The Navy is once again requiring flu shots for a wide range of sailors and civilian employees, quietly reversing course three months after the Pentagon made the vaccine optional across the force.
New guidance released Friday in a Navy administrative message, or NAVADMIN, restores the requirement for recruits headed to boot camp, sailors in officer training pipelines, certain deploying sailors and reservists, health care workers and some civilian employees. It takes effect immediately, and covered personnel must be vaccinated by Jan. 15, 2027.
The order does not mention what happened in between to cause such a reversal. In April, the flu shot was mandatory. By June, an outbreak had swept the Air Force's basic training base in Texas, sickening hundreds of recruits, and a 25-year-old trainee was dead.
Who Has to Get the Shot
Rather than covering the whole force, the Navy guidance names specific groups. New requirements now mandate flu vaccines for sailors in initial entry training, including recruits at boot camp and those in officer accession programs such as Officer Candidate School, Officer Development School, the Naval Academy and its preparatory school. It also applies to the staff who run those programs.
Beyond training, the mandate touches deployed sailors who are in or heading to areas with influenza activity or host-nation vaccine requirements, reservists in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear response roles, and reservists mobilized on presidential orders.
Basically, anyone involved in direct or indirect patient care. Civilian employees in child development and youth services programs are also mandated.
Everyone else in the Navy is encouraged, but not required, to get the vaccine. This guidance allows for religious and medical exemptions,...