AstraZeneca has admitted in court documents that its Covid vaccine can cause a rare side effect in an admission from the pharmaceutical giant that could lead to a multi-million pound legal payout.
The vaccine manufacturer is being taken to court in a class action relating to claims that its vaccine caused death and serious injury in dozens of cases – with a reported 51 cases lodged in the UK High Court. British families and victims are seeking damages estimated to be worth up to £100 million.
The first case against the company was lodged by Jamie Scott, a British father of two, last November. Mr Scott suffered permanent brain injury as a result of the jab in April 2021 – with a second claim being lodged by the family of Alpa Tailor, a British woman who also died after taking the vaccine in March 2021.
Father-of-two Scott was left unable to work after he suffered multiple blood clots, causing severe brain injury, following vaccination. He became the first person to take legal action for damages against the pharmaceutical giant, with his case having the potential to set the scene for more claims and damages which could run into the thousands, if not millions.
IT specialist Mr Scott’s clinical team confirmed that the blood clots he suffered were caused by the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. His family, speaking to the British press at the time the case emerged, said they were told the vaccine had been safe, however what happened had been “life-changing.”
Lawyers are now arguing that the AstraZeneca jab resulted in a side effect with has had a devastating impact on a number of British families.
While AstraZeneca contests the claims, it accepted in a legal document submitted to the High Court in February, that its Covid vaccine “can, in very rare cases, cause TTS,” the Telegraph newspaper has now revealed.
The legal document read: “It is admitted that the AZ vaccine can, in very rare cases, cause TTS. The causal mechanism is not known.
“Further, TTS can also occur in the absence of the AZ vaccine or any vaccine. Causation in any individual case will be a matter for expert evidence.”
TTS, which stands for Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, causes blood clots and a low blood platelet count. The admission from the pharmaceutical company was made in a legal defence to Mr Scott’s High Court case; if the drug firm accepts that its vaccine, developed with Oxford University, was the cause of serious illness and death in specific legal cases, it could pave the way for payouts.
Meanwhile, the UK government has pledged to underwrite AstraZeneca’s legal bills. While the government has indemnified the company against any legal action, it has so far refused to intervene.
Lawyers for those suing the company have argued that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is “defective” and that its effect has been “vastly overstated,” claims which the vaccine manufacturer denies.
Sarah Moore, a partner at law firm Leigh Day, who is bringing the legal claims against AstraZeneca, told the Telegraph newspaper that the government and AstraZeneca were playing “strategic games,” rather than addressing the “devastating impact” of their vaccine.
“It has taken AstraZeneca a year to formally admit that their vaccine can cause the devastating blood clots, when this fact has been widely accepted by the clinical community since the end of 2021,” Ms Moore said.
“In that context, regrettably it seems that AZ, the government, and their lawyers are more keen to play strategic games and run up legal fees than to engage seriously with the devastating impact that their AZ vaccine had upon our clients’ lives.”
AstraZeneca, in a statement supplied to The Telegraph, said: “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.”
Ireland suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March 2021 following reports of patients developing blood clots after inoculations. It joined a string of other European countries in halting the vaccine, following blood clot reports in Norway.
Health authorities in Austria were the first to sound the alarm on the potential dangers of the AstraZeneca vaccine that same month, while Italy followed closely, banning the use of vaccines from a specific batch of AstraZeneca doses following the death of a serviceman in Sicily, who had died of cardiac arrest one day after receiving his first dose of the vaccine.
Denmark however became the first European country to temporarily suspend the entire rollout of the AstraZeneca jab. As with all vaccines, those in Ireland can report suspected side effects to the Health Products Regulatory Agency (HPRA).