Navy Restores Flu Vaccine Requirement for Recruits, Deploying Sailors

Military.com ^ | Jul 28, 2026, 4:09 PM EDT | Adam Gramegna

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Mandates ended in April. An outbreak arrived in June. The reversal is still spreading across the force one service at a time.

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,...

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[Libloather]

Used to have an issued yellow shot record. Don’t lose it.

[Midwesterner53]

Flu shots are common sense. We have the ability to prevent many diseases that wiped out forces in the 19th century if we only use those techniques.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Flu shots are common sense. We have the ability to prevent many diseases that wiped out forces in the 19th century if we only use those techniques.

Remove Big Pharma's immunity from vaccine lawsuits and we can talk.

[Eli Kopter]

When I went in, we got all our shots at the same time, half in each cheek. I think there about 15 or 20.

[ansel12]

For those who don’t know, when in the military and you and your wife go to the beach on the weekend resulting in you getting a bad sunburn that means you can’t work, then the military can bring you up on charges.

[Equine1952]

They used to give 200cc’s of penicillin in the butt cheek, each got it in the same butt cheek so we limped in unison during basic while marching it off. Germs dropped dead when we got cLose to them. The shots for overseas duty always kicked my ass. None did crap to my evil sailor mind ain’t no vaccine for that.

[umbagi]

Have mine. Last entry was 1969…

[Freee-dame]

The flu shot is called a “shot” because it is not a vaccine. If the preparers of the current year’s flu shot guesses correctly what will be the predominant strain of flu that year, the flu shot MAY lessen symptoms. Much of the time it’s not even a match for the kind of flu that predominates.

What I call the not-a-vaccine should have been called a shot. Instead, TPTB changed the definition of the word “vaccine” in Internet dictionaries.

[delta7]

They were not MRNA poison back then.

[Theophilus]

No they are not. They make sadistic tyrants feel good, that’s about it. Beat Navy!

[Equine1952]

I remember my first flu shot. I actually had two. It was OLD #7 and a 16 oz beer chaser. Didn’t work any better than the crap now but I didn’t GAF what strain was going around either. 😜

[Falconspeed]

“New requirements now mandate flu vaccines.” Unethical and sad. Flu vaccines are 35% effective.

[roving]

I have never gotten a flu shot in my life.

[Revel]

What kind of flu shot are they talking about ?

[ebshumidors]

We lined up in BCT and got the air shots in both shoulders.

[ebshumidors]

We lined up in BCT and got the air shots in both shoulders.

[ebshumidors]

We lined up in BCT and got the air shots in both shoulders.

[Eli Kopter]

They must have liked our butts. Air shots at the same time.

[Eli Kopter]

Yes, that is when we trusted them and asked no questions. I was only 18 then.