COVID Vaccine Maker Sued Over Deaths

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is facing a number of legal claims in the United Kingdom over deaths or debilitating injuries attributed to an adverse reaction to its COVID-19 vaccine.

The roughly 80 claimants are part of a litigation group that says they are not anti-vaccination, but are seeking compensation from the company beyond the £120,000 ($152,000) allocated through a government damage payment scheme.

The cases being brought related to instances of Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT), a rare condition that can cause life-threatening blood clots that block the flow to vital organs.

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca told Newsweek that it does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings, but that patient safety was its "highest priority" and that "our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems."

They stressed that AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine had been approved by regulatory agencies based on its safety and efficacy, and that both clinical trials and real-world data have shown it has "an acceptable safety profile." In its first year of use, it saved "more than six million lives worldwide," they said.

The first batch of lawsuits were filed in the U.K. High Court in December, with a second following from January. A spokesperson for Leigh Day, the law firm representing the claimants, told Newsweek that so far 37 claims had been made, with a further 27 to be issued by the start of March.

They said that though the claims are not yet formally part of a group or collective action, they anticipate that the court will manage them together.

The litigation group claims that AstraZeneca is liable for the injury and loss caused in the rare cases, and that the lack of a "fair and adequate" compensation scheme left them "no choice" but to sue.

Among the claimants is Kam Miller, whose husband Neil died on May 1, 2021 at the age of 50 due to VITT. Her claim was filed on December 4 last year.

She told the BBC on Thursday that she was not anti-vaccination and her husband "was keen to have his jab as soon as he could," but that she believed "if he had not had the vaccine and later got Covid, he would have survived it."

"I have lost the comfort of having Neil and I feel empty and very lonely. It is a struggle," Miller said. "He was the main breadwinner in our family. I don't want to be going to court but the money is needed for the future of my family."

Lisa Shaw, a radio journalist, died shortly after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in April 2021, which the litigation group said caused blood clots to develop in her brain.

Her husband, Gareth, said he and his eight-year-old son Zach "live with the loss of Lisa every single day. Our house is a quiet place now. Days don't have the same glow. Grief casts a long shadow over everything."

Other claimants survived VITT but have been left with disabilities. The litigation group said Jane Wrigley has "extremely limited" mobility after developing the condition in March 2021, which required emergency surgery.

Sarah Moore, a partner at Leigh Day acting on behalf of the claimants, told Newsweek that her clients had sought litigation "not because they want to be, but rather because they have been left with no other choice."

"The fact that the vaccine is causatively linked with potentially fatal blood clots is now well established in the scientific literature and now formally admitted by AstraZeneca in the course of these proceedings," she said, but criticized AstraZeneca for not resolving the issue out of court.

Moore said of the government compensation scheme that "for many of those whom we represent that figure is simply not enough to replace a lifetime of lost earnings, and/or to provide proper care for those who are now learning to live with permanent brain injuries. Many within the litigation group are young and have young families whom they are now unable to support financially."

Claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause widespread health problems or dramatically increase the chance of death are often made by groups opposed to vaccination, but research by health agencies around the world has found that adverse health events due to vaccination are far less common than those among patients infected with coronavirus itself.

According to Britain's National Health Service, VITT affects approximately one in 50,000 people aged under 50 and one in 100,000 aged over 50. The American Society of Haemotology says that the "risk of death and serious outcomes of COVID-19, including thrombosis, far outweigh risk of VITT possibly associated with highly efficacious vaccines."

Update 2/26/24, 11:45 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from a Leigh Day spokesperson and lawyer Sarah Moore.