OAN’s Brooke Mallory
1:08 PM – Thursday, February 22, 2024
The UK-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is being sued for over 70 claims in relation to fatalities or severe injuries that were caused by a reaction to their COVID-19 vaccine.
The approximately eighty plaintiffs are members of a legal collective that maintains it is not “anti-vaccine” while suing the corporation for additional damages above the £120,000 ($152,000) allotted by the government’s damage payment program.
The cases being filed are connected to incidents of vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia (VITT), which can result in potentially fatal blood clots that obstruct blood supply to essential organs.
An AstraZeneca representative said that while the company does not comment on pending legal processes, patient safety is its “highest priority” and that their “sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems.”
They emphasized that regulatory agencies had authorized AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccination due to its “safety and effectiveness” and that evidence from clinical studies and real-world use had allegedly demonstrated that it has “an acceptable safety profile.” They further claimed that it had saved “more than six million lives worldwide” in its first year of operation.
According to the litigation, the first round of claims was filed in the U.K. High Court in December, and a second round was submitted in January. The organization says that AstraZeneca is responsible for the harm and losses that occurred in these instances, and that they had “no choice” but to file a lawsuit because there was no “fair and adequate” compensation plan in place.
A woman named Kam Miller is one of the claimants. Her husband, Neil, passed away on May 1st, 2021, at the age of 50, as a result of VITT. Her husband “was keen to have his jab as soon as he could,” she told the BBC on Thursday, adding that she was not against vaccinations but that she thought “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.”
The litigation group also claimed that Lisa Shaw, a radio journalist, developed blood clots in her brain following her administration of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in April 2021. She passed away soon after.
Zach, her eight-year-old son, and her husband Gareth “live with the loss of Lisa every single day,” according to Gareth. “Our house is a quiet place now. Days don’t have the same glow. Grief casts a long shadow over everything.”
Additionally, some applicants have been left disabled despite having survived VITT. According to the organization, a third person, Jane Wrigley, had emergency surgery in March 2021 and now has “extremely limited” mobility as a result of the ailment.
VITT affects about one in 50,000 people under 50 and one in 100,000 people over 50, according to the British National Health Service. The “risk of death and serious outcomes of COVID-19, including thrombosis, far outweigh the risk of VITT possibly associated with highly efficacious vaccines,” the American Society of Hematology claimed.
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