Scores of U.S. airmen and trainees fell ill at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas after the Pentagon ended the requirement for an annual flu shot, and the base has now started vaccinating people again. A source at the base said the number sickened could be over 200.
The outbreak came less than two months after Pete Hegseth announced in April that the flu vaccine mandate would end, calling it “absurd” and “overreaching.” Lackland is where Air Force enlistees go for basic military training, so even a localized outbreak can move through a constant churn of recruits and slow the flow of training. That is why the numbers matter now: the base cycles through tens of thousands of recruits every year, and the illness struck in the middle of a policy shift that was supposed to take vaccines off the table.
An Air Force spokesperson described the outbreak as “localized” to the basic training wing, and said medical professionals and public health officials moved quickly to isolate and treat symptomatic trainees to reduce further exposure. Medical personnel are also monitoring trainees who were in close contact with sick members, and symptomatic trainees are receiving antiviral medications such as Tamiflu. The request that followed was harder to square with the policy change itself: the Air Force asked for an exemption that would let it mandate flu vaccines at the base after the outbreak.
Sean Parnell said Hegseth granted exemptions to the vaccine policy for all military departments to keep up with “critical operational realities,” and said updated guidance makes influenza vaccination voluntary for all Active and Reserve Component Service members and Department of War civilian personnel. He also said the Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness was directed to consolidate all requested exceptions to the policy. That leaves the base response in a narrower place than the broader rule: vaccinations are back at Lackland, but the final count of sickened troops has not been pinned down, and the exemption process for the base now appears to be the key unresolved step.
