https://thehill.com/policy/national-...avirus-vaccine
~40% of Marines have refused the vaccine.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-h...-idUSKBN2BX0JX“The Navy and Marine Corps are providing substantial educational information broadly, and working with commands to ensure Marines, Sailors, and beneficiaries have accurate information regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccines to encourage individuals to get immunized,” Capt. Andrew Wood, a Marines spokesman, told The Hill in a statement.
The data showed that 75,500 Marines have received the vaccine and 48,000 have declined it. Overall, the acceptance rate is 61.1 percent.
The numbers for the data include reserves, active-duty and Individual Mobilization Augmentee Marines, according to CNN.
Wood said the Marines mostly include “young and healthy individuals” and that there are multiple reasons they might decline the vaccine.
The South African variant can bypass the protections of the Pfizer vaccine.
The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.
It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.
The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit.
But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated - 5.4% versus 0.7%.
This suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original coronavirus and a variant first identified in Britain that has come to comprise nearly all COVID-19 cases in Israel, the researchers said.