True toll of blood clot side effect victims of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine may NEVER be known, lawyers claim
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We may never know the true number of people laid low by a rare but devastating complication related to AstraZeneca's Covid jab, lawyers representing families have told MailOnline.
Fifty-one families are currently pursuing legal action against the pharmaceutical titan, arguing its 'defective' jab was to blame for their injuries and deaths of loved ones.
Called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TSS) or alternatively vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) the complication caused dangerous, and potential deadly, blood clots to form in the body.
Alleged victims are being represented by Sarah Moore, a partner at law firm Leigh Day, who told this website the true scale of the issue may never be uncovered.
‘The criteria for what constituted VITT was really only published and made available to the clinical community from the beginning of March (2021).'
She added that as the complication was only spotted when the jab started being dished out to younger people, cases in older individuals could potentially have slipped under the radar mistaken for problems linked to Covid or other health issues.
'We may never know if there were other injuries that could have been related to the vaccine before March 2021,' she said,
Ms Moore said the youngest of the 51 cases included in the action involves someone just 19-years-old.
She added that many of the younger people affected were key workers or those working with vulnerable, like those staffing Food Banks, who got the jab not to protect themselves from the virus but to help keep other people safe.
Ms Moore added that the firm had been ‘inundated’ with people coming forward claiming that they or family member had been affected by the AstraZeneca's jab, but some have had to be turned away.
AstraZeneca's Covid jab timeline
January 2020: Oxford University scientists start working on a Covid vaccine after the World Health Organization declares the spread of the virus a 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern'
March 2020: Then Prime Minister Boris announced the first national lockdown. That same month, the Government invests £88million in the development of the Oxford vaccine
April 2020: Alongside AstraZeneca, scientists start the first clinical trials of their new vaccine. This involved 1,000 volunteers in the UK
July 2020: Results from phase two trials of AstraZeneca's jab are published
4 December 2020: Covid jab rollout begins with the Pfizer vaccine. Over-80s and care home workers are given priority
8 December 2020: Phase three trial results of the AstraZeneca's jab are published. These are what health officials will use to approve the jab for use in the UK
30 December 2020: AstraZeneca's jab is approved for emergency use
4 January 2021: First AstraZeneca doses start being dished out. Brian Pinker, 82, is the first person to receive the jab outside of clinical trials
8 January 2021: Frontline NHS staff start being offered vaccines
8 February 2021: Over-70s are called forward
14 February 2021: Roll-out opens up to Brits with underlying heath conditions, as well as the over-65s
28 February 2021: All over-60s are invited for jabs
11 March 2021: European countries start suspending use of the AstraZeneca jab after death of a 60-year-old woman from a blood clot
17 March 2021: Over 50s start being offered Covid jabs in the UK
19 March 2021: Several European countries reverse decision to suspend AstraZeneca jab after initial investigations find no link to reported blood clots
31 March 2021: People living with vulnerable adults are called forward to get a Covid vaccine in the UK, even if they are younger than eligible age groups
7 April 2021: UK restricts the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to over-30s over a small but statistically significant risk of blood clots in younger people
30 April 2021: Over-40s are called forward for Covid jabs
7 May 2021: Restriction of the AstraZeneca vaccine is widened to include over-40s
August 2022: Government sources say they will not order anymore AstraZeneca Covid vaccines instead focuses on mRNA alternatives
March 2023: Dozens of patients and families launch legal action against AstraZeneca due to
April 2023: Widower of a BBC presenter Lisa Shaw who died after having the vaccine said he has 'no alternative' but to sue AstraZeneca
4 August 2023: Anish Tailor, whose wife Alpa died in March 2021 after receiving her first AstraZeneca dose, filed a product liability claim against AstraZeneca at London's High Court. His lawyer says he has nearly 50 other clients who will formally sue AstraZeneca in the coming months
17 August 2023: IT engineer Jamie Scott, who suffered a brain haemorrhage the day after his first AstraZeneca jab starts a legal case against the company. The law firm representing Mr Scott says it represents around 40 other individuals or bereaved families
'Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, it isn’t feasible for us to take on every case we have been approached with,' she said.
She added that for some potential victims time to seek compensation had run out.
‘For the claims we are bringing, those injured or bereaved have three years from the date of their injury or the death in which to bring a claim so unfortunately in many cases that cut off has now been reached,' she said.
Her comments come after Cambridge-based AstraZeneca, which is contesting the claims, recently acknowledged in a legal document submitted to the High Court that its vaccine 'can, in very rare cases, cause TTS'.
TTS is a medical condition where a person suffers blood clots along with a low platelet count. Platelets typically help the blood to clot.
The complication – listed as a potential side effect of the jab – has previously been called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).
AstraZeneca's admission could lead to pay-outs on a case-by-case basis.
TTS, or vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), is thought to be linked to at least 81 deaths in the UK.
Not all are proven, however. And not every family is seeking legal action.
The complication is exceedingly rare, given the millions of doses dished out during the roll-out.
Taxpayers will foot the bill of any potential settlement because of an indemnity deal AstraZeneca struck with the Government in the darkest days of Covid to get the jabs produced as quickly as possible while the country was paralysed by lockdowns.
It comes just days after the firm reported a revenue exceeding £10billion in the first quarter of 2024, a rise of 19 per cent. Company officials stated it had enjoyed a 'very strong start' to the year.
AstraZeneca said in a statement: 'Our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems.
'Patient safety is our highest priority, and regulatory authorities have clear and stringent standards to ensure the safe use of all medicines, including vaccines.
'From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects.'
The new documents submitted to the court marks a change of language from the previous AstraZeneca submissions made last year, when it claimed that TSS couldn't be caused by its jab 'at a generic level'.
Its new submission also adds that the trigger that causes some people to suffer TSS from the AstraZeneca jab is unknown and can also occur in people independent of any vaccine.
It claims: 'Causation in any individual case will be a matter for expert evidence.'
Similar action to that being taken by British families is understood to be underway in other countries where the AstraZeneca jab was deployed, including in Germany and Italy.
AstraZeneca denies its new submission represents a U-turn on acknowledging its jab can cause TTS in court documents.
Lawyers representing victims and families are suing AstraZeneca under the Consumer Protection Act 1987.
They argue the vaccine was 'a defective product' that was 'not as safe as consumers generally were reasonably entitled to expect'. AstraZeneca has strongly denied these claims.
Health officials first identified cases of VITT linked to AstraZeneca's jab in Europe as early as March 2021, just over two months after the vaccine was first deployed in the UK.
However, it wasn't until April that year that evidence became clear enough that the jab started to be restricted.
Spooked officials first restricted the jab to only people over 30. They then narrowed this to only over-40s in May 2021.
As the vaccine still worked against Covid, it was still deemed worth giving to older Brits who were at greater risk of death or injury from falling ill with the virus.
About 50million doses of the AstraZeneca jab were dished out in the UK in total.
Official data shows at least 81 Brits have died from blood clot complications apparently linked to the AstraZeneca jab, according to figures collected by the UK's drug watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
A further unconfirmed number have been injured and/or disabled.
Further Covid vaccine rollouts have either minimised use of the AstraZeneca jab and/or phased it out entirely in favour of mRNA alternatives like those made by rival pharma giants Pfizer and Moderna.
'Healthy' doctor, 32, dies after rare severe reaction to AstraZeneca
With health officials not ordering any more doses, this effectively means the jab has all but been withdrawn in the UK.
The risk of TTS following AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine is thought to be in the region of one in 50,000.
However, AstraZeneca's jab is credited with saving some 6million lives globally during the Covid pandemic.
Victims and families seeking compensation that MailOnline has spoken to staunchly insist they believe in the merits of vaccination for public good and aren't anti-vaxxers.
The reasons why people are taking legal action are complex.
Some who are severely disabled are facing huge ongoing medical costs as well as being out of work. In some cases, their family members are also having to quit employment to provide them round-the-clock care.
READ MORE: How safe is AstraZeneca's Covid jab? What rare complications can it cause? Who is taking legal action against the pharma giant? All you need to know
Others are, at least in part, pursuing the action as way of seeking justice for either those they have lost or lives that have been completely upturned by their injuries.
Part of the reason some are seeking action is due to what critics have labelled the inadequate or arbitrary nature of the Government's vaccine damage payment scheme.
This policy, which has been around since the 70s, offers people, or their families, a tax-free sum of £120,000, though restrictions apply.
It is only available to the family of those who died or those left 'severely disabled' — defined as being at least 60 per cent disabled, based on evidence from a doctor — because of a vaccine.
Established back in 1979, the scheme is meant to reassure people that, in the unlikely event something goes wrong, the state will provide support.
In theory, it is meant to combat vaccine hesitancy and encourage the public to get jabbed from various pathogens helping protect the nation from disease.
But critics have said the scheme is arduous, stingy in terms of total amount payout, and cruel in its 60 per cent disability threshold that leaves people less severely injured with nothing.
As it is not compensation, people who take the payment are still entitled to take legal action against a vaccine manufacturer if they choose, as some people affected by the AstraZeneca jab are.
Campaigners hope the attention brought by the AstraZeneca case will spark a much needed rethink of how the nation's vaccine injured and bereaved are supported.
If Brits are left destitute from vaccine-derived injuries, experts fear this will fuel vaccine hesitancy in the future, risking public health from a variety of preventable diseases.
It could also leave people vulnerable to a potential future pandemic from a novel virus if some refuse the jabs out of fear that they, or their families, could be left financially ruined if something goes wrong.
One of those seeking compensation is for injuries linked to AstraZeneca's vaccine is father-of-two and IT engineer Jamie Scott.
He was left with a permanent brain injury following a blood clot and the bleed on the brain after getting the vaccine in April 2021. He has been unable to work since.
His wife, Kate, is one of critics of the vaccine damage payment scheme, previously saying: 'Even if we do get the £120,000 payment, it's not enough to keep us going for ever. And it's insulting, considering what Jamie has been through.'
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