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July 6, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Navy is piling yet more pressure on sailors to get the COVID-19 jab by requiring randomized COVID-19 tests for the non-vaccinated, and promising to lift this requirement once a threshold of sailor vaccination per command is met.

A Navy lieutenant — who is known to LifeSiteNews but wishes to remain anonymous — shared a directive from his Executive Officer explaining that a non-vaccinated sailor from his command would be chosen at random every two weeks to be tested for COVID-19, as per new Naval COVID-19 guidance. The new procedure is known as Sentinel Surveillance Testing (SST).

A Naval Safety Officer also noted in an email that restriction of movement (ROM) is imposed on those who test positive for COVID-19. During ROM, sailors must isolate themselves in their residence for two weeks, leaving only for “routine activities” such as doing their laundry and exercising outdoors, provided they keep a distance of more than six feet from others. Sailors under ROM are barred from fitness centers, messing facilities, and other “widely used support services.”

Last year, the New York Times reported, “The standard [COVID-19] tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus,” and that “up to 90 percent of people testing positive” for COVID-19 are thus “not likely to be contagious.”

Even more pressure to vaccinate comes from Navy stipulations that 75 percent immunization of the command lessens the requirement to one COVID-19 test a month, and 85 percent immunization will negate the requirement completely.

“This is segregating the haves and have nots and making those resisting to suffer more,” said the anonymous Navy lieutenant.

The SST requirement adds to the list of restrictions imposed only on the unvaccinated in the Navy: face masks, physical distancing, testing in and out prior to deployment, and post-deployment ROM.

For example, “Non-immunized personnel returning to [the U.S. mainland] from deployment are required to have a negative viral test result no more than three days before travel into the US; be tested 3–5 days after arrival and stay home and self-quarantine for seven full days, even if the test is negative.”

Only those who have received the COVID-19 jab may leave their ship to “take advantage of base services” in overseas ports. The vaccinated likewise “are not required” to undergo the isolating ROM-sequester.

On the other hand, the unvaccinated who are even suspected of exposure to COVID-19 are required to quarantine, according to current Navy COVID-19 guidance, which states, “Asymptomatic personnel who are not immunized and are suspected of exposure shall quarantine in accordance with (IAW) CDC and local medical guidance.”

The Navy lieutenant known to LifeSiteNews has decried the policies such as restricting leave to those “vaccinated” against COVID-19 as “coercion.”

In a comment on the new regular testing requirement for the unvaccinated, he said, “This is amounting to harassment and discrimination of those who object to what is going on.”

The lieutenant had previously disclosed to LifeSiteNews several stories of sailors who didn’t want to receive the COVID-19 jab, but did so anyway because of the freedoms it opened up for them. “They want their freedom back, they want their lives back like so many people in the world do since we’ve been locked under COVID restrictions and tyranny,” he said at the time.