Three people win payouts linked to COVID vaccination

Three people have won payouts from the government as compensation for damage caused to them or a close family member by the COVID vaccines.

One woman whose fiance died after the jab became the first person to win a payout this week after she was awarded £120,000.

According to the BBC, two more have now secured payments while a further 95 people are trying to claim compensation through the government's vaccine damage payment scheme.

All of the claims are related to the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab.

More than 1,300 claims have been made to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme so far from tens of millions of vaccines given.

Read more: Women are 22% more likely to suffer from long COVID than men, study shows

Only 20 have been sent for medical assessment.

Vikki Spit is thought to have been the first to win a COVID-linked payout after her fiance died from immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) eight days after getting his jab.

VITT is an extremely rare side effect of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab which can cause blood clotting and excessive bleeding, which can be fatal.

Some 444 cases of VITT have been recorded in the UK from 49million doses of the vaccine.

81 deaths have been reported although it is not known if these were all caused by the jab.

The benefits of having the vaccine still vastly outweigh the risks of catching COVID.

The risk of death from COVID is roughly 500 times higher than the risk of death from the vaccine.

But this does not mean the families who have lost loved ones or seen people they're close to getting ill have suffered any less.

Charlotte Wright, whose NHS clinical psychologist husband Dr Stephen Wright was one of the first to have this kind of reaction to the vaccine told the BBC she has been using food banks since he died.

She said even if she was given £120,000 it would be nothing compared to her loss.

Normally it takes up to two years for the government to process a payment for any medical injury.

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Several Conservative MPs have said the current scheme is not up to scratch and is not working for the victims of people who had side effects from COVID jabs.

Sir Christopher said in March the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979, which allows for the system, “is not working”.

He said the payments were too slow, with even coroner's rulings that the vaccine was the cause of death not speeding up payments.

The current legislation says you need to be 60% disabled by the vaccine to claim the money.

But lawyers and medical professionals have complained this is hard to quantify with someone who is suffering severe fatigue or another side effect.

If a person is awarded a pay out this does not stop them from pursuing legal action to try and claim more money.