By CAITLIN DOORNBOS | STARS AND STRIPES Published: May 14, 2021
Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See more staff and wire stories here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. WASHINGTON – Personnel fully vaccinated against the coronavirus are no longer required to wear masks indoors or outdoors at Defense Department facilities, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced late Thursday. Face masks have been mandatory for everyone since April 5, 2020, on all Defense Department property, installations and facilities when social distancing was not possible, which was in line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines at the time.
The Defense Department (DOD) is dropping its mask mandate for fully vaccinated personnel, a policy in line with recently updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance.
Pentagon Drops Mask Mandate for Fully Vaccinated Personnel
14 May 2021
The Pentagon on Friday morning released a memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks informing Department of Defense (DOD) personnel that masks are no longer required indoors or outdoors on DOD facilities for those who are fully vaccinated, in accordance with new Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines.
“Fully vaccinated DoD personnel (who are at least two weeks beyond their final dose) are no longer required to wear a mask indoors or outdoors at DoD facilities,” the memo from Hicks said.
The memo also said personnel who are not fully vaccinated should continue to follow applicable DOD mask guidance, including continuing to wear masks indoors.
DOD Lifts Mask Mandate for Fully Vaccinated Personnel
Fully vaccinated DOD personnel are no longer required to wear a mask at Defense Department facilities.
Defense Department personnel who are at least two weeks out from a final vaccine dose are no longer required to wear masks indoor or outdoors at DOD facilities, the Pentagon announced Friday.
The official announcement, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, comes just a day after the CDC updated its guidelines to say fully vaccinated people “can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing,” except when required by law or regulations. It also comes shortly after reports that individual installations were starting to lift mask mandates. At the beginning of May, Defense One reported that U.S. Marines at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, were no longer required to wear masks inside many buildings on base if they’re fully vaccinated including some gyms and most work facilities.
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Those of you hungering for “bipartisanship” can rest easily. There’s one area of the national legislature in which folks regularly “reach across the aisle” to fashion cooperation and compromise: the feast of fat things that is the defense budget. For example, the determination to toss more money down into the money pit that is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, aka The Flying Swiss Army Knife, is as purely bipartisan as it is purely mercenary, as the
The Joint Strike Fighter Caucus is composed of 27 representatives seven Democrats and 20 Republicans who led a similar letter last year calling for continued spending on the F-35 program. The caucus was founded in 2011 to prevent F-35 budget cuts by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.), who was the House’s top recipient of cash from Lockheed Martin’s PAC and employees last cycle at nearly $198,000, and then-Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), whose top career contributors were mostly military contractors, including