Lt. Col. Theresa Long says in a sworn federal court declaration that she has firsthand knowledge of more than 29 service-member deaths following COVID-19 vaccination and is reviewing tens of thousands of military-linked adverse-event reports, though the reports themselves do not establish that vaccination caused the deaths.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.

A U.S. Army physician assigned to investigate possible COVID-19 vaccine injuries among military personnel has submitted a sworn declaration in federal court saying she is reviewing approximately 55,000 adverse-event reports involving service members, including 2,544 reports involving deaths.

Lt. Col. Theresa Long, an Army flight surgeon who has been assigned as senior medical military adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., made the assertions in litigation pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Long also said she has firsthand knowledge of more than 29 deaths among service members following COVID-19 vaccination, according to the declaration described by TrialSite News.

Her statement represents sworn testimony and raises questions that investigators are examining, but it does not establish that the vaccines caused the 2,544 deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a report to VAERS means that an event occurred after vaccination, not necessarily because of vaccination. Reports can be filed regardless of whether a vaccine is believed to have caused the event, and establishing causation requires additional medical and epidemiological investigation.

Long wrote:

“I have first hand knowledge of over 29 deaths of servicemembers after vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccines. I am currently tasked with investigating the 55,000 vaccine adverse event reports filed on individuals identified as members of the U.S. Armed Forces, this includes 2544 deaths.
“As the first aviation brigade surgeon I had one servicemember die of rapid onset and progression of esophageal cancer after COVID vaccination and one in which a student pilot who had never been COVID positive, who experienced sudden cardiac death at the controls of a helicopter during a training flight.
“An independent cardiologist evaluated all imaging, labs and history on the student pilot and determined that myocardial injury secondary to the COVID-19 vaccines was the most likely cause.”

Long had previously disclosed in an Aug. 14 deposition that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailed her to serve as Kennedy’s senior medical military adviser and that she was examining the same 55,000 adverse-event reports and 2,544 reported deaths. At that point, she described the death reports as cases requiring further investigation rather than established vaccine-caused fatalities.

The declaration was filed in Adirim v. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency et al., litigation originally brought by Dr. Terry Adirim against the CIA, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Ivan Raiklin.

Adirim previously served as acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The federal court dismissed her claims against the CIA and Ratcliffe in February 2026 while allowing part of her defamation claim against Raiklin to proceed. Court records show that the surviving dispute involves statements Raiklin made concerning Adirim’s role in implementation of the military’s COVID-19 vaccine policy.

Long’s declaration was submitted on Raiklin’s side of that civil case. Her statements therefore constitute evidence and expert opinion offered by a litigant, not findings made by the court concerning vaccine causation.

Adirim signed a September 2021 Pentagon memorandum concerning use of the FDA-licensed Comirnaty vaccine and Pfizer-BioNTech doses being administered under emergency-use authorization as the Defense Department implemented its vaccination requirements.

The military vaccination mandate had been ordered in August 2021. The Pentagon ultimately vaccinated more than 96% of the active and reserve force before the requirement was rescinded in January 2023 pursuant to the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

Long’s filing also cites changes in diagnoses recorded in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, or DMED.

According to the declaration, the military data showed a 151% increase in myocarditis and pericarditis, a 43.6% increase in pulmonary embolisms, a 34.9% increase in ovarian dysfunction, a 22.9% increase in hypertension and an 18.3% increase in cancers of the digestive organs.

Those percentages require important context.

DMED became the subject of a prolonged dispute over data integrity after military whistleblowers and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., raised questions about increases in diagnoses recorded for 2021.

In correspondence concerning the DMED data, the Defense Department acknowledged that information it initially supplied to Johnson was incomplete and said records for 2016 through 2020 had been affected by a programming problem during a server migration.

The Pentagon told Johnson that the error distorted comparisons between 2021 and the earlier five-year baseline and that the problem was corrected in January 2022. It subsequently said additional data indicated that increases in several conditions were more likely associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection than vaccination. Johnson challenged the completeness of that explanation and continued seeking additional information from the department.

A later Defense Department analysis provides another point of comparison.

In a congressionally required study covering active-duty service members from 2017 through 2023, the Pentagon found that myocarditis and pericarditis incidence increased during the short risk period following COVID-19 vaccination. The increase was not sustained over the one-year period examined and was smaller than the increase observed after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The study found statistically significant increases in myocarditis and pericarditis during the 21 days after vaccination. It also reported that incidence of six conditions — life-threatening arrhythmias, acute kidney failure, immune thrombocytopenia, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis and Bell’s palsy — decreased following vaccination in its adjusted analysis. Most of the conditions examined increased following COVID-19 infection, and for most conditions the highest incidence was among service members who had been infected but not vaccinated.

The Pentagon analysis reported an adjusted incidence-rate ratio of 2.26 for myocarditis during the 21-day post-vaccination risk window, while the corresponding ratio following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 11.89.

Those findings do not resolve the individual cases Long says she is investigating.

VAERS is designed as an early-warning system capable of detecting unusual patterns that warrant additional investigation. Anyone can submit a report, and health professionals and vaccine manufacturers are required to report certain events even when it is uncertain whether vaccination caused them.

For that reason, the 55,000 reports Long says she is examining should not be interpreted as 55,000 confirmed vaccine injuries, and the 2,544 death reports are not equivalent to 2,544 confirmed vaccine deaths.

CDC states explicitly that “a report to VAERS does not mean the vaccine caused the event” and that VAERS data alone cannot establish how frequently an adverse reaction occurs or whether vaccination caused a particular illness or death. Serious reports can trigger collection of medical records and additional investigation.

Long says her current review involves obtaining information beyond the public VAERS entries, including medical records and autopsy materials in some cases.

That distinction is particularly relevant to the deaths she says she personally encountered.

In the student pilot case described in her declaration, Long said an independent cardiologist reviewed the pilot’s imaging, laboratory findings and medical history and concluded that myocardial injury secondary to vaccination was the most likely cause.

Myocarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination is a recognized adverse event, particularly among adolescent and young adult males, although it remains uncommon. The Defense Department’s own analysis similarly detected an increased short-term incidence after vaccination.

Long also described a service member who developed rapidly progressing esophageal cancer following vaccination. Her statement establishes the sequence she observed but, without additional evidence demonstrating a causal mechanism, an illness occurring after vaccination does not by itself establish that vaccination caused the cancer.

The broader investigation now underway could determine how many of the reports represent coincidental events, known vaccine reactions, previously unidentified safety signals or cases in which evidence supports a causal connection.

Earlier Pentagon reviews reached conclusions that differ from Long’s allegations. Reporting on her appointment said Defense Department analyses had not identified vaccine-caused deaths among service members, while the department’s 2025 health study found the limited short-term myocarditis and pericarditis signal but did not support broad increases across the other conditions it analyzed.

Long’s sworn declaration puts those competing interpretations into a federal court record while a separate government inquiry continues.

The filing does not establish that COVID-19 vaccines killed 2,544 troops, nor does the existence of VAERS reports prove causation. It does establish that a senior Army medical officer assigned to advise Kennedy is examining those reports and is asserting under oath that she personally encountered more than 29 service-member deaths following vaccination, including at least one case in which she says an outside cardiologist attributed myocardial injury to the vaccine.

Her investigation is now focused on determining which of the thousands of reported events can be supported by underlying medical evidence — a question that cannot be answered by VAERS counts alone and that remains unresolved while the military’s COVID-19 vaccination program receives renewed federal scrutiny.

Original article