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The archbishop of the U.S. military said on Tuesday that Catholic troops could refuse the mandated Covid vaccine on religious grounds. “No one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience,” Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the military services, said in a statement. (Ward, 10/12)

The Pentagon has begun the monumental task of fully vaccinating hundreds of thousands of civilian employees against the coronavirus with just weeks to meet its self-imposed deadline of Nov. 22. But as of yet, it has no system to verify who's gotten the jab. There are 763,000 civil servants at the Defense Department, and just 42 percent of them, or just under 319,000, are fully vaccinated, according to the Pentagon’s public data. (Satter, 10/7)

President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large businesses came one step closer to reality on Tuesday after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted the initial text of an emergency vaccine rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review. Last month, the president announced businesses with more than 100 employees will be required to mandate coronavirus vaccines or administer weekly tests. Employers are also required to pay employees for time off to get vaccinated and recover from side effects. The rule will take effect once the OMB finishes its review and it’s published in the federal register. (Stimson, 10/13)

Last week’s White House report reiterated President Biden’s employer mandate that businesses with 100 or more employees require every worker to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 or tested weekly. The requirement impacts more than 80 million workers in the private sector. Jeffrey Zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, summarized in last week’s press briefing that, "We are on track to quadruple the supply of rapid, at-home tests available to Americans by December to more than 200 million a month and to increase the number of places Americans can access free testing in the United States to 30,000 community-based locations." (Sudhakar, 10/12)