Department of Veterans Affairs personnel will be automatically granted any requests for religious exemption to the COVID-19 mandate -- unless they work with elderly, frail or severely ill veterans, Secretary Denis McDonough said Tuesday.
During an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., McDonough said he anticipates more than 5.6% of Veterans Health Administration employees, or roughly 21,000 staff members, according to Military.com calculations, to request religious waivers, based on the number who sought an exemption for the flu vaccine in late 2020.
But, he said, "the religious exception for us is self-executing, which is to say we are not going in to challenge the legitimacy of somebody's claim to a religious exception."
However, VHA employees who work in environments that serve vulnerable veterans, such as oncology departments, spinal cord injury centers, intensive care units or nursing homes, could see their requests denied.
"We may have so many people claim religious exception that we can't safely provide care for veterans in those vulnerable situations -- in which case, we reserve the right to deny religious exception," McDonough said.
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Any VA employees who refuse vaccination without an exemption could be fired, he said.
The automatic acceptance of religious waivers for civilian workers at the VA is a stark contrast to the military itself. Troops are permitted to request exemptions to the pending COVID-19 mandates, but the requests are often scrutinized by the chain of command and may not be granted.
On July 26, McDonough announced that roughly 115,000 medical professionals, including doctors, dentists, registered nurses and more, were required to be fully vaccinated within eight weeks, or by Sept. 20. In August, the department ordered almost all employees, support staff, volunteers and contractors in the Veterans Health Administration to get the vaccine by Oct. 8.
Nearly 321,000 staff members were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, according to data posted by the department.
But that figure doesn't necessarily reflect the totality of the VA's vaccinated employee population, because employees may have received the vaccine outside the VA and have not yet reported it.
McDonough said 91% of the Veterans Health Administration employees have uploaded their vaccine status into the department's tracking system. He promised data would soon be released on the numbers of fully or partially vaccinated, as well as those who refused the vaccine.
The VA was the first federal agency to mandate vaccines for some workers -- a requirement that was later expanded to all federal employees, including about 750,000 civilians in the Defense Department. The Pentagon has ordered a Nov. 22 vaccination deadline for its civilian employees, who also have the option of requesting a religious exemption.
It is unclear how many VA employees have been granted a religious waiver. Nearly 6% of VHA employees requested a religious exception to the department's flu vaccine mandate last year. McDonough said that he expects requests related to the COVID-19 mandate to be higher.
No major religions oppose COVID-19 vaccinations, including the Roman Catholic Church, whose leader, Pope Francis, has called receiving it an "act of love" that is consistent with the faith.
Still, some say they object to vaccines tested using cell lines from fetuses aborted in the 1970s and 1980s. The vaccines themselves contain no aborted fetal tissue, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Since the start of the pandemic, 228 VA employees have died of COVID-19. The department has diagnosed 369,101 cases among its patient population, and 16,338 veterans have died.
McDonough said the department has not yet had any staffing shortages as a result of the vaccine mandate.
"We're doing all the planning, as you would expect," McDonough said. "We will make individualized determinations in our extensively negotiated disciplinary process. ... At the end of that, throughout each of these steps, if the employee still refuses, they will be separated."
-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.
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