Vaccine side effects

A local court recently ordered the government to compensate a man diagnosed with brain diseases after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the head of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), which had rejected his claims of damage to his health due to the vaccine. It was the first known case that has recognized the causal relationship between the vaccine and its adverse effects.

The man in his 30s claimed he had a fever one day after getting an AstraZeneca shot in April of last year and felt dizziness and numbness in his legs the following day. He went to a hospital and was diagnosed with an intracerebral hemorrhage, cerebral cavernous malformation and mononeuropathy. Still, the KDCA refused to recognize the causal relationship because the man had a preexisting condition. However, the court decided that the vaccination caused these problems because he had shown no such symptoms before receiving the vaccine shots, despite his preexisting condition.

The KDCA appealed the verdict, saying it would actively explain the medical evidence and adverse vaccine reaction information. However, many experts point out that the quarantine authorities have been somewhat passive in acknowledging the association between the COVID-19 vaccines and their side effects. Currently, eight other lawsuits have been filed seeking compensation for the COVID-19 vaccines’ adverse effects, and the number is likely to increase sharply.

The government urgently needs to come up with systematic countermeasures, expanding the scope of recognizing causal relationships between the COVID-19 vaccines and their adverse effects. Nor should it pass the entire burden of proof on to victims. Although the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has displayed a relatively stable trend in recent weeks, immunity has waned and vaccinations continue. The government ought to expand support for those showing ill effects and cope with individual damages more broadly than it does now.