Media blackout: People receive compensation for COVID-19 vaccine injuries in UK

by Jacob Fuller

Trey Paul, FISM News

 

Not only are people coming forward with horror stories of being hurt by the COVID-19 vaccine, but some in the United Kingdom are also being compensated for their injuries. Chances are, you haven’t heard much about it.

Thanks to the Vaccine Payments Act of 1979, there is a basis for the UK government to pay not only people hurt by the experimental vaccine but families who lost loved ones to the side effects.

The government’s vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS) is all laid out here on the British government’s website.

“If you’re severely disabled as a result of a vaccination against certain diseases, you could get a one-off tax-free payment of £120,000 [about $140,542],” it states. “This is called a Vaccine Damage Payment. You can also apply for this payment on behalf of someone who has died after becoming severely disabled because of certain vaccinations. You need to be managing their estate to apply.”

“Severely disabled” means a person is 60% disabled and can include a mental or physical disability based on medical evidence from the medical providers involved in your treatment.

According to a report in the BBC, Vikki Spit is believed to be the first person to receive said compensation after her 48-year-old fiancé, former rock singer Zion, developed vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) and died eight days after getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. VITT leads to a combination of blood clotting and low platelets and reports show so far, there have been 444 cases out of 49 million AstraZeneca doses.

Sarah Moore, an attorney who represents people seeking compensation, told the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that Spit’s legal victory was an “important moment.”

“While the VDPS payments are very modest in amount, and will do very little to alleviate the financial difficulties with which many families are now struggling as a consequence of injury or bereavement, the fact of payment for some will mark a moment of vindication in that it is the clearest statement yet, by the government, that in some rare instances the covid-19 vaccines have caused very significant injury or death,” she said.

So far, Moore believes most of the payments have been made to people experiencing (VITT) or cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) after getting vaccinated. But she did tell the BMJ that she knows of one payment involving someone who developed Guillain-Barré syndrome after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Another attorney, Peter Todd, who specializes in vaccine injury cases, told the BBC that the government’s vaccine damage payment scheme is “really just totally inappropriate for what it’s now used for.”

He says part of that has to do with the fact claimants have to prove they are at least 60% disabled. Mr. Todd says the requirement shouldn’t apply to COVID-19 cases and stems from old compensation schemes for industrial accidents involving crush injuries in mines.

According to a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson, progress is being made and work is underway to “improve the VDPS, to make the process simpler, swifter and more accessible for claimants.”

A spokesperson for NHS Business Services Authority, the body that handles the VDPS, confirmed that as of May 2022, more than 1,500 claims have been made regarding COVID-19 vaccines. That spokesperson told the BMJ that the VDPS was not a compensation scheme, but one for payments to help ease the financial burden of people who are severely disabled as a result of vaccination against a specific disease.

“The COVID-19 vaccines are new. Establishing a causal relationship between the vaccines and their potential adverse effects is not a straightforward matter and has taken time,” said the spokesperson.

Right now, claims are medically assessed by an independent, third-party medical assessor.

Despite these compensation reports, leaders with the World Health Organization (WHO) still claim that vaccines are “safe and effective” and getting vaccinated is “one of the most important things you can do to protect yourself against COVID-19.”

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