Tag: vaccine injury

You can’t sue Pfizer or Moderna if you have severe Covid vaccine side effects. The government likely won’t compensate you for damages either

If you experience severe side effects after getting a Covid vaccine, lawyers tell CNBC there is basically no one to blame in a U.S. court of law. 

The federal government has granted companies like Pfizer and Moderna immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines.

“It is very rare for a blanket immunity law to be passed,” said Rogge Dunn, a Dallas labor and employment attorney. “Pharmaceutical companies typically aren’t offered much liability protection under the law.“

You also can’t sue the Food and Drug Administration for authorizing a vaccine for emergency use, nor can you hold your employer accountable if they mandate inoculation as a condition of employment.

Congress created a fund specifically to help cover lost wages and out-of-pocket medical expenses for people who have been irreparably harmed by a “covered countermeasure,” such as a vaccine. But it is difficult to use and rarely pays. Attorneys say it has compensated less than 6% of the claims filed in the last decade.

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Health worker in Alaska had serious allergic reaction to Pfizer’s vaccine

A health worker in Alaska had a serious allergic reaction after getting Pfizer Inc’s coronavirus vaccine, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing three people familiar with reports of the person’s health.The allergic reaction occurred on Tuesday and the person was in stable condition after being hospitalized, the New York Times reported.It was not clear if the person had a history of allergic reactions, the report said.

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Covid-19 vaccine trial participant had serious neurological symptoms, but could be discharged today, AstraZeneca CEO says

The participant who triggered a global shutdown of AstraZeneca’s Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trials was a woman in the United Kingdom who experienced neurological symptoms consistent with a rare but serious spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis, the drug maker’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said during a private conference call with investors on Wednesday morning.

The woman’s diagnosis has not been confirmed yet, but she is improving and will likely be discharged from the hospital as early as Wednesday, Soriot said.

The board tasked with overseeing the data and safety components of the AstraZeneca clinical trials confirmed that the participant was injected with the company’s Covid-19 vaccine and not a placebo, Soriot said on the conference call, which was set up by the investment bank J.P. Morgan.

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World’s Largest Vaccine Maker Suing Man for Saying COVID-19 Vaccine Injured Him

It should have already been considered a crime against humanity decades ago that law makers were lobbied (bribed) into passing legislation in which vaccine manufacturers cannot be held legally liable for any damage their products may cause. It was an act which established official protocols, such as the secret vaccine injury court to largely sweep under the rug any instances of such side effects.

But now a new lawsuit filed by the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India, in association with multinational pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, seeks to take this a step further — by attempting to set the precedent that vaccine manufacturers can actually sue those that may have been harmed by their faulty products.

The litigation filed in an Indian court is a countersuit to a lawsuit that has been filed against SII by one of the volunteers who participated in a trial study for the developmental Covisheild. A vaccination for SARS-CoV-2.

After participating in the trial study, the yet to be named volunteer flagged severe neurological and psychological symptoms 10 days after the first injection. Symptoms which were then diagnosed as acute neurological encephalopathy, resulting in memory loss, lapses in cognitive functions such as reasoning, and changes in personality. A legal notice had been sent to ICMR, DCGI, AstraZeneca and Oxford University to stop testing, manufacturing and distributing the vaccine. The plaintiff filed a suit after the notice failed to receive response.

SII then filed a countersuit, worth $13.5 million, for defamation after alleging that the volunteers illness had nothing to do with the vaccine trial. This is a statement which was also backed up by the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) and DCGI (Drugs Controllor General of India). However, these assertions have been challenged by independent researcher Dr. Anant Bhan, the former President of the International Association of Bioethics and current professor at India’s Yenepoya Medical University. Dr. Bhan notes that both of these institutions are government entities directly affiliated with SII, and stresses that transparency should be the top priority given that the parties vested financial interests.

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Vaccine Safety to Remain Unclear Until Millions Get Their Shots

Monitoring Covid-19 vaccines for safety issues will fall to a group of U.S. health agencies that also will have a hand in their rollout, a potential hurdle in persuading skeptics to get the shots, say former government officials who helped control an outbreak a decade ago.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs and other health agencies all have separate systems to track side effects and safety in people who get the first shots. But there are concerns the groups advising the agencies on all aspects of a vaccine may face public skepticism over their safety assessments at a time when vaccine hesitancy is a major concern.

“The same advisory committee that told them to get it are telling them it’s OK,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of vaccine safety for the National Vaccine Program Office during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak. “What are the optics of that?”

There’s also worry that a lack of unified oversight could make it more difficult to document and quickly act on safety issues. Meanwhile, the stalled presidential transition could complicate efforts even further, said Jesse Goodman, who led the FDA office that handled vaccines during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak.

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The coronavirus vaccine comes with more side effects than a flu shot. Experts urge people to get it anyway

The first coronavirus vaccine authorized in the United States may cause more side effects than the flu vaccine, but the most common reactions — soreness at the injection site, fatigue and headache — are mild or moderate in most people and fade after a few days, according to analyses of clinical trial data.

Infectious disease experts say most people can safely get the vaccine, but they should be prepared for some of these potential side effects.

“Any robust vaccine may generate some discomfort but it is worth the mild side effects — these side effects are not extraordinary — to be immune against this circulating new pandemic,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician at UCSF.

The FDA granted emergency use authorization late Friday to the first vaccine in the U.S., developed by Pfizer and German firm BioNTech, which has been shown to be 95% effective at preventing COVID-19 illness.

Health care workers and residents of long-term care centers will be first in line to receive the vaccine in California, followed by essential workers. Mass vaccinations of the general public are expected in spring or summer 2021.

The Pfizer vaccine’s most common side effects were fatigue, headache, muscle pain and chills, according to an FDA analysis of Pfizer’s clinical trial data. Less common were joint pain, fever, diarrhea and vomiting. The vast majority of those symptoms were mild or moderate.

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