Air Force unit faces flu outbreak weeks after vaccine mandate dropped

Dozens of service members at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas have fallen ill with the flu in the weeks since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rescinded the vaccine mandate , sources familiar confirmed to CBS News. "Over the last three weeks, the 37th Training Wing, in close coordination with the 59th Medical Wing, has been managing a localized influenza outbreak among trainees at Basic Military Training," an Air Force spokesperson told CBS News in a statement. The New York Times first reported on the outbreak at the training wing in Texas. The unit has implemented mitigation measures to isolate and treat symptomatic trainees, according to the Air Force spokesperson, and is monitoring trainees who may have been exposed. The trainees who are symptomatic are receiving antiviral medications such as Tamiflu. In April, Hegseth issued a memo that rescinded the decades-long mandate and said in an accompanying video that the Pentagon was "seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our warfighting capability." In a statement on Thursday, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that under the updated guidance, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness granted exceptions to this policy for the departments of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and National Security Agency and Defense Health Agency if there were needs to make the vaccine mandatory. …