Source- BioNTech
The COVID-19 vaccine partner of Pfizer, BioNTech, is going to court in its native Germany to defend itself against claims that their injection caused damage, two years after the original COVID-19 vaccination drive swept the globe.
According to Reuters, the plaintiff is a German healthcare worker who is suing for at least 150,000 euros ($161,500) in damages for alleged bodily injury as well as unspecified property loss. The woman alleges that after receiving the Comirnaty vaccination, she had upper-body discomfort, swelling limbs, exhaustion, and sleeping issues.
The plaintiff’s lawyers from the company Rogert & Ulbrich will contest the vaccine’s favorable risk-benefit profile as determined by European Union authorities and vaccine review organizations. According to German drug legislation, manufacturers are only responsible for side-effect damages if “medical science” can demonstrate that their medications have an erroneous label or cause excessive harm in comparison to their advantages.
Using a “dedicated team” of medical professionals, BioNTech examines each liability case and will “meet any justified claims,” a business representative stated in an email. Comirnaty’s risk-benefit analysis is upheld by the vaccine’s manufacturer, who also pointed out that 64 million individuals in Germany alone, out of a global population of 1.5 billion, had gotten the injection.
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The European Medicines Agency has received approximately 1.7 million reports of suspected side effects related to COVID-19 vaccines as of May this year, equivalent to around 0.2 reports per 100 vaccine doses administered. In Europe, nearly 768 million vaccine doses have been distributed so far. In the United States, the former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This declaration granted immunity to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers and administrators against legal liability for damages, except in cases of death or serious injury resulting from intentional misconduct. The declaration remains in effect until December 2024.
