Vaccine Injury Claims Spiked 27x After COVID-19 Injection Rollout

U.S. Government Accountability Office Report Exposes Critical Failures in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program

by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report titled, COVID-19: Information on HHS’s Medical Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program:

To encourage the development of medical countermeasures, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act limited the legal liability of manufacturers and others for losses related to the administration or use of covered countermeasures. It also authorized HHS to establish the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) to compensate individuals who die or suffer serious physical injuries directly caused by the administration or use of certain medical countermeasures. CICP is operated by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)—an agency within HHS.

The program:

• “Received a surge of 13,333 COVID-19 claims—27 times the number of claims received in the first decade of the program”:

• “Completed a review of about a fourth of all claims.”

• “Found that 92 (3%) of the completed claims were eligible for compensation.”:

HRSA paid roughly $6.5 million in compensation for eligible claims as of June 2024, with most of that amount for serious injuries, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, caused by the H1N1 vaccine. About $400,000 was paid for injuries related to COVID-19 countermeasures, such as myocarditis (inflammatory heart condition).

This so-called compensation program is an insult to the millions of Americans that have been killed or injured by COVID-19 countermeasures:

Their extremely inefficient processing time and minimal adjudicated claims to be eligible for compensation was blamed on the following factors:

Nearly all of the challenges HRSA experienced operating CICP stem from the large influx of claims related to COVID-19 medical countermeasures and limited resources to process and pay claims prior to fiscal year 2022, HRSA officials told GAO. Specifically:

• shortage of staff to adjudicate the large influx of claims;

• outdated information systems to process the large number of claims; and

• limited medical and scientific evidence to base decisions about injuries or deaths allegedly caused by novel COVID-19 countermeasures.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 must be abolished to ensure vaccine manufacturers are held fully accountable for safety and face true liability for harm caused. The next administration must implement a robust vaccine injury compensation program with adequate staff, abundant funding, and independent COVID-19 vaccine injury experts that aren’t compromised by Big Pharma.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

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