Vaccine-maker BioNTech yesterday faced its first legal claim in its home country of Germany over adverse effects allegedly suffered by some users of its COVID-19 vaccines, more than two years after one of the world’s fastest and most extensive inoculation campaigns.
In the face of the deadly pandemic that emerged in early 2020, which prompted border closures and lockdowns that trapped millions of people in their homes, the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines had been widely hailed as a life-saver. However, the jabs, which had been developed at breakneck speed and granted early approval for usage, are now the focus of legal procedures in several countries, including France and Britain, where plaintiffs argue the vaccines harmed their health.
In Germany, a court in Hamburg was prepared to hear a case against BioNTech, which, together with US giant Pfizer, produced the first mRNA vaccine Comirnaty.
Photo: AFP
However, the hearing was delayed after the claimant’s lawyers put in a last-minute challenge of the judge’s impartiality, and asked instead for a panel of judges to rule on the case.
In her claim, the plaintiff reported suffering effects such as “pain in the upper body, swelling of the extremities, exhaustion, fatigue and sleeping disorders” after receiving the vaccine, the court said.
She is seeking 150,000 euros (US$161,789) in damages and recognition that the “defendant is bound to provide material damages,” the court added.
Her lawyer, Thomas Ulbrich, who is also representing another 250 people in similar cases, said his clients were “all healthy” before suffering from symptoms, allegedly following their jabs.
He believes that the medical files he has on hand offer a link between the vaccines and the symptoms experienced by his clients.
BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine, a scientific breakthrough, had been granted conditional marketing authorization as early as Dec. 21, 2020, by the EU regulatory authority European Medicines Agency.
Similar authorization for Moderna, another mRNA vaccine maker, swiftly followed.
With fears of catching the disease running high, the vaccines were pre-ordered by governments even during their development phases, and deployment swiftly followed once regulatory authorities gave their approval. However, the new generation of inoculations also sparked a wave of vaccine skeptics questioning the safety of the jabs.
Out of 192 million jabs given in Germany, the nation’s medicines regulator, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, said that 338,857 suspected cases of side effects were reported, including 54,879 severe reactions.
Among the worst cases, “the symptoms are very different, they vary from stroke to thrombosis to cardiac diseases,” said another German lawyer, Joachim Caesar-Preller, who represents 140 clients making similar claims.
He is seeking up to 1 million euros in damages per case — plus interest — but concedes that a “rocky and long road” lies ahead in the legal battles.
A key point for the courts is whether the side effects of the medication, when used correctly, surpass “a justifiable level according to the findings of medical science.”
In other words, the effects have to be sufficiently serious to be taken into account, Munich University professor Anatol Dutta said.
A claimant identified only as Kathrin K., 45, believes her symptoms are severe enough. She said she lost a lot of weight after taking the vaccine and had to undergo several intestinal operations.
“I hate it when people tell me that I’m an isolated case,” she said. “I’m not.”
BioNTech said that the number of liability claims made to the company is very small compared with the number of doses it has delivered worldwide, and that each claim had to be examined individually.
“Justified liability claims would of course be met by BioNTech,” it said, but added that “no causal relationship between [the] health impairments presented and vaccination with Comirnaty has been proven” in the cases it had reviewed so far.
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