A lesson learnt on vaccine harms

The legal action being brought against AstraZeneca over the side-effects of its Covid vaccine challenges the usual narrative surrounding the UK’s inoculation programme. The drug was developed in Oxford and hailed as a triumph for British scientific endeavour.

However, scores of people have either died or been left disabled by brain injuries caused by the vaccine. The High Court is to hear two test cases for damages over a new condition known as Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT).

The vaccine’s role has been largely acknowledged and sums paid out under the Vaccine Compensation Scheme. But the families say the £120,000 tax-free payment is not enough to compensate for loss of a bread-winner or the ability to work.

The claim maintains that the AstraZeneca vaccine was “defective” in that it was not as safe as individuals were entitled to expect. However, this should not detract from the signal success of the vaccination programme which is credited with saving millions of lives. Adverse effects, while tragic for some, were extremely rare and not confined to Covid jabs.

People know that there are risks and side effects associated with most medicines, which always need to be balanced against the benefits of taking them. Furthermore, it is important that this does not play into the hands of those who seek to tarnish all vaccines.

One lesson to be learnt it is that young, healthy people should not have been forced, through restrictions on their movements, to be vaccinated against a disease that hardly affected them.