Army Doctor Testifies She Is Reviewing 2,544 Reported Troop Deaths for Kennedy and Hegseth to See If COVID Shots Caused Them

Army physician Theresa Long testified in an August 14 deposition, published by Politico on September 3, that she is working with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to examine whether service members died from the COVID-19 vaccines mandated in 2021. Long said Hegseth detailed her to serve as Kennedy's senior medical military adviser, a role not previously reported. She said she is reviewing 2,544 deaths among service members that were reported to the federal vaccine adverse event database but never verified, and that she hoped to complete the work within about a year. She testified she knew of 28 people who died because of the vaccine but was barred from saying more.

Placing a serving military physician inside HHS to pursue a contested vaccine theory bears on how federal health findings are produced.

Politico cited a 2026 Pentagon report finding that myocarditis and pericarditis cases rose shortly after vaccination but that the effect was not sustained over a year, with no deaths noted.