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Nearly 40% of U.S. Marines who have been offered the COVID-19 vaccine have declined it, according to the Pentagon. Of the 123,500 Marines who have had access to the vaccine, 75,500 Marines are either fully vaccinated or have received one dose, and about 48,000 have declined it, Communication Strategy and Operations Officer Capt. Andrew Woods told USA TODAY. (Elbeshbishi, 4/10)

The Pentagon is touting its rollout of coronavirus vaccines even as it is unable to say how many service members have actually received COVID-19 vaccinations. Defense Department (DOD) officials say they have delivered more than 2 million shots, but a lack of hard numbers has made it difficult to determine how many of those have gone into the arms of troops versus military families and civilian employees. (Mitchell, 4/11)

A military spouse who was hospitalized due to COVID-19 was able to fight off the infection after taking part in a Defense Department study that involved a filter attached to a dialysis machine to rid her blood of the virus. Retired Col. Matt Hepburn, a physician who worked for years in the defense advanced research projects agency, or DARPA, told "60 Minutes" that the military is working on several moonshot projects to help prevent the next pandemic and assist in the current one. One included a sensor that would be placed underneath your skin in order to detect chemical reactions that may be occurring due to an infection. The sensor is still being developed but Hepburn likened it to a "check-engine light." (DeMarche, 4/12)

It might surprise you to learn that many of the innovations deployed to counter the coronavirus were once obscure Pentagon-funded projects to defend soldiers from contagious diseases and biological weapons. The life-saving vaccine developed in record time owes a debt to these programs. To learn more, we met the man who has been leading the rapid vaccine effort, retired Colonel Matt Hepburn. An army infectious disease physician, he spent years with the secretive defense advanced research projects agency or DARPA, working on technology he hopes will ensure COVID-19 is the last pandemic. (Whitaker, 4/11)

Suicides across the armed services rose sharply in the first year of the coronavirus, hitting a record 571 deaths in 2020, but a Pentagon official and others say the stress of the pandemic isn’t the likely culprit. Just what is behind the steady rise during years of Defense Department efforts to reduce self-inflicted deaths baffles experts, a mystery nowhere near being solved. (Christenson, 4/12)

Often called this generation’s Agent Orange, burn pit exposure has been pointed at by many veterans as the cause of otherwise unexplained health problems. (4/12)