Brits who have been injured or harmed by the Covid jab may soon be entilted to a different compensation package under new plans to ‘reform’ the current vaccine damages programme.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced he is looking to change the rules, following claims that the current one-off payment of £120,000 is inadequate.
Campaigners have also criticised the requirement that claimants must be deemed at least 60 per cent disabled in order to qualify for the funds.
Now, in a letter to the family of a man left disabled by the AstraZeneca jab seen by The Telegraph, Mr Streeting said he has ‘commissioned officials to work up a number of options’ to reform the current vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS).
Kate Scott’s husband Jamie suffered a permanent brain injury from a blood clot brought one by an incredibly rare reaction to the AstraZeneca jab missed in safety trials.
He was given the vaccine in April 2021 and has been unable to work since.
Mrs Scott described the VDPS as ‘ludicrous’ with the minimum 60 per cent disabled threshold far too high.
‘If your injury equates to just a 10 per cent change, that’s life-changing for you. It might mean you can’t work anymore,’ she said.
In a letter to the family of a victim of the AstraZeneca jab Wes Streeting said he has ‘commissioned officials to work up a number of options’ to reform the current vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS)
Most claims to the VDPS on the Covid jab rollout relate to the AstraZeneca jab developed with Oxford University which has been found to have caused death or serious injury in dozens of cases
‘The Government needs to remember that people took the AstraZeneca vaccine for the greater good and because they were told it was safe and effective. They need to make sure families have proper support’.
In the letter, Mr Streeting acknowledged sufferers’ frustration at the lengthy delays to reform.
‘Given how long you have been campaigning for, I can appreciate that being told “we’re working on it” might not be the response you were hoping for – but I want to assure you that there really is work going on behind the scenes on this,’ he wrote.
The Scotts aren’t the only family with injuries, conditions and even deaths linked to the Covid vaccine to criticize the VDPS.
Grieving widow Kam Miller, 58 and from Leicester, was successful in her application to the VDPS after her fit and healthy’ husband Neil Miller, 50, died shortly after getting the AstraZeneca jab in March 2021.
His causes of death were initially recorded as ischaemic heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis — but, after an inquest, this was corrected to vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT), the rare jab reaction linked to blood clots that could cause death and disability.
Mrs Miller said she believes many people are unfairly missing out on £120,000 due to the 60 per cent threshold.
She also believes the lump sum offered is insufficient.
‘(£120,000) for life, for a man who could have worked another 15 years at least. It’s not sufficient,’ she said.
Neil Miller, 50, collapsed and died on May 2021, not long after receiving a first Covid-19 vaccine injection – his wife Kam has criticised the after-care given to sufferers and their families
Neil and Kam Miller – she has spoken out about the delivery of Covid-19 vaccinations and follow-up treatment after he died aged 50 not long after receiving one in 2021
‘It’s just a one-off payment, it doesn’t take anything else into account. And this judgment of disability – if you’re deemed 60 per cent disabled you get something, if only 59 per cent then you don’t.
‘Some people have given up. They haven’t got the energy or strength to keep pushing, because they’re already in and out of hospitals.’
Recalling the horrific moment of her husband’s death she said: ‘I was planning a party for him – he’d be around his family, surrounded by people.
‘Then I heard a thud and knew it was him. I couldn’t open the bathroom door, he was lying in front of it – I don’t know how I managed to get in, while my daughter rang 999 then came up too.
‘We were both trying to give him CPR – my daughter’s arms were bruised in the end. She would later say, “Maybe I did something wrong”. That mark has been left on my daughter, always thinking she couldn’t save her dad.’
There have been dozens of other tragic fatalities in Britian linked to the AstraZeneca jab.
One of these was ‘fit and healthy’ Jack Last who was only offered the AstraZeneca jab in error.
The 27-year-old engineer, from Stowmarket, Suffolk, was mistakenly offered the vaccine as his medical records incorrectly listed him as living with his ‘at risk’ parents.
Jack Last, 27, died at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge on April 20 2021 just a few weeks after getting the Oxford AstraZeneca jab
Shortly after receiving it on March 30, 2021, he started complaining of headaches. He died three weeks later from a blood clot on the brain.
Just a week after he got the jab, Government health advisers urged people under 30 to have an alternative vaccination to the AstraZeneca jab after data suggested an increased risk of fatal blood clots.
Mr Last’s family previously stated it was ‘heartbreaking’ to learn of the errors which led to him being invited to receive the vaccination early.
Lisa Shaw, an award-winning radio presenter on BBC Radio Newcastle, is another who died from the AstraZeneca jab reaction, died in May 2021.
Lisa Shaw, 44
Ms Shaw had been vaccinated on April 29 2021, but started developing headaches in the weeks that followed.
On May 13, she was admitted to hospital where her husband Gareth was handed a print-out explaining what VITT was.
At first doctors were confident they could treat it, but on May 16, Ms Shaw started to experience speech problems.
Her husband recalled: ‘We were having a conversation about [their son] Zach’s swimming lessons and she couldn’t get out the word ‘goggles’.’
It was discovered that she had suffered a bleed on the brain and was rushed to surgery where part of her skull was removed to ease the pressure.
She never recovered and spent the last five days of her life on a ventilator.
Tom Dudley, 31, was another suffering headaches in the days after the got the AstraZeneca jab near his home in Sheffield on April 27, 2021
Tom Dudley, 31
Two weeks later he was found unresponsive in the early hours at the home he shared with his partner Simone and their two daughters.
The Sheffield United fan was rushed to Northern General Hospital, but doctors said the bleed on his brain was ‘incurable’ and he died three days later.
It is not clear if this bleed was specifically caused by VITT. However, a medic who treated the father-of-two in hospital told an inquest it was ‘fair to say’ he would still be alive today if he was given a different vaccine.
Coroner Tanyka Rawden recorded his cause of death as a bleed on the brain, caused by the vaccine.
Kelly Dunley, 38, was another who died, developing a deep vein thrombosis — a type of blood clot — after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid jab.
Kelly Dunley, 38
Ms Dunley, from Stoke-on-Trent, had her first jab on March 2, 2021, but was rushed to Royal Stoke University Hospital on May 17 that year after collapsing.
Despite the efforts of medics, she died the same day. A post-mortem found a blood clot in her leg had travelled to her lung.
A coroner ruled in June 2022 that her death was a pulmonary embolism caused by deep vein thrombosis and was linked to ‘complications of the vaccine’.
Another fatality was Nicola Weideling, 45, who died of a stroke attributed to the AstraZeneca jab.
The 45-year-old Oxford University Press executive suffered catastrophic bleeds on her brain after being hospitalised with blood clots. She received the jab 24 days prior on April 21.
Nicola Weideling, 45, with her husband Kurt
Other deaths include Oli Akram Hoque, 26, from Ilford, East London, who died from a blood clot weeks after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine and Dr Stephen Wright, 32, who worked as a clinical psychologist in South East London, who suffered a blood clot in the brain after having his first dose of the jab in January 2021.
Stephen Ward, a 57 year-old father-of-two from Newcastle-under-Lyme, was another who died from a VITT just 11 days after getting the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Stephen Ward, 57
The latest figures show that of the 16,824 VDPS claims officially made so far, 8,018 were still awaiting an outcome — though the vast majority of the rest have been turned down.
While most were rejected due to insufficient proof that injuries were caused by a vaccine, at least 406 applicants were told that while their injury was thought to be linked to the jabs, they didn’t meet the 60 per cent severe disability threshold.
Proposed changes to the VDPS were also considered by the previous Government with then health secretary, Victoria Atkins, also asking officials to create a series of options for reform.
Some of the options reportedly being considered are overhauling the VDPS, which was originally established in 1979, generally or creating a new compensation scheme for the injured similar to that set up in the wake of the infected blood scandal.
Other deaths include Oli Akram Hoque, 26, from Ilford, East London, died from a blood clot weeks after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine and Dr Stephen Wright, 32, who worked as a clinical psychologist in South East London , who suffered a blood clot in the brain after having his first dose of the jab in January 2021.
Vaccine injury charity founder Charlet Crichton, who has been forced to give up her work as a sports therapist due to debilitating effects since receiving her jabs, is another critic of the scheme.
Her charity UKCVFamily is campaigning to have the VPDS overhauled as it is ‘failing most people miserably’.
She said reform was critical given how another mass rollout of a new jab, similar to that which happened in Covid, couldn’t be ruled out.
‘People should be able to get help sooner if something like this happens again. We all know that things had to be done quickly but what we don’t accept is that people who were injured or suffered haven’t received adequate help or care,’ she said.
Ms Crichton said, in her case, while she noticed extreme fatigue after her first AstraZeneca jab, problems escalated after her second dose.
She said: ‘The week after that vaccine, I had a numbness that progressed up the body, I became incontinent, I had tremors. I would sleep all day.
‘It’s been severe enough to have ended my career. I have to take about 20 different tablets a day. It’s been life-changing but many people have had conditions which are more severe.’
The AstraZeneca jab has been effectively withdrawn following the discovery it carried the very rare risk of triggering potentially fatal blood clots.
Data acquired under the Freedom of Information Act showed 188 people have been told they are eligible for the Vaccine Damage Payment, a £120,000 tax-free sum, due to Covid jab injuries
Called VITT or alternatively, thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), the risk was missed in clinical trials due to how rare it was.
Only officially spotted in March 2021, the complication causes people to suffer blood clots along with a low platelet count. Platelets typically help the blood to clot.
The complication is exceedingly rare, given the millions of doses dished out during the roll-out.
The risk is thought to be in the region of one in 50,000, though some estimates put it even lower.
Clotting cases were first spotted elsewhere in Europe. Several nations on the continent went on to slow or even suspend their rollout of the jab.
Britain eventually followed its European neighbours, first stopping the jabs being used for people under 30 and then weeks later those under 40.
Experts based this on younger groups being at less risk of Covid, meaning the benefits of being jabbed weren’t worth the risk.
TTS is thought to be linked to some 80 deaths in the UK, according to figures collated by UK drug watchdog, the MHRA. Not all are proven, however.
