Over 1.5 million people who reported a COVID-19 vaccine injury to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) cannot even apply for compensation from the government program that covers COVID-19 vaccine injuries — that’s because the program covers only death or “serious physical injury.”

According to the government’s definition of “serious physical injury,” the injury must either be “life-threatening,” result in “permanent impairment of a body function or permanent damage to a body structure,” or require “medical or surgical intervention to preclude permanent impairment of a body function or permanent damage to a body structure.”

According to OpenVAERS, there are over 1.5 million people who suffered injuries that weren’t life-threatening and were not life-ending. These individuals are shut out of the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

Injuries such as chronic headache, chest pain, digestive issues, dizziness, fatigue, nausea and rapid heartbeat are not serious enough to qualify for compensation since CICP only provides “compensation to an eligible individual for a covered injury — as in, serious injury or death.”

COVID-19 shots were classified as “countermeasures” during the COVID-19 pandemic, which means they are governed under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act.

The PREP Act grants blanket liability protection to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers for nearly every type of injury caused by the vaccines.

Instead, the injured must submit a claim to the little-known CICP within one year of injury. CICP is the federal program that “provides compensation for covered serious injuries or deaths that occur as the result of the administration or use of certain countermeasures,” including COVID-19 vaccines.

‘I will be dead by the time they compensate people’

Even for those whose injuries meet the criteria for submitting a claim to CICP, the odds are slim that they will be compensated quickly, sufficiently, or at all.

As of June 1, CICP had received 13,836 COVID-19 vaccine injury claims and had compensated only 39 — less than 0.3%.

CICP isn’t keeping up with the number of claims, according to its website. As of June 1, the program had yet to review or was still reviewing 9,423 of the nearly 14,000 claims submitted since the start of the pandemic.

Among those is Doug Cameron, an Idaho man who received a COVID-19 vaccine when his employer “strongly implied” he should get the shot. Ten days later, he was permanently paralyzed from a blood clot. He filed a CICP claim in 2022.

In a November 2024 interview with The Defender, Cameron’s wife said that every time she calls to check on their claim, she is told, “Yeah, it’s still sitting on somebody’s desk for medical review.”

That is still the case today, Cameron told The Defender. “No word. I will be dead by the time they compensate people,” he said.

Cameron’s injury resulted in about $2 million in medical expenses.

For those few compensated by CICP, the payouts likely didn’t cover their medical expenses. The median payout was $4,182. Due to two anomalous payments, the average payout was just over $80,000.

In 2022, React19, whose mission is to support the COVID-19 vaccine-injured, launched React19 Care Fund to provide financial help for medical treatments and therapies for people injured by the shots.

Cameron hasn’t applied for a grant. “Other people need the money more than I do,” he said.

In January, the nonprofit surpassed $1 million in its latest round of grants. “To date, we have given out $1,292,169.79 to 175 recipients,” React19 Co-Chairman Joel Wallskog told The Defender in an email.

Wallskog, an orthopedic surgeon who was injured by Moderna’s shot, said he applied to CICP in early to mid-2021. “It took me 18 months to receive my denial,” he said.

Wallskog immediately appealed. “It took about 14 months after submitting the appeal to get denied again,” he said.

How can the government fix this?

Former U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra declared the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11, 2023.

However, before he left office, Becerra extended legal protections for COVID-19 countermeasures until Dec. 31, 2029. “The end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Declaration does not automatically terminate PREP Act coverage,” according to HHS’ website on the PREP Act.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now has sole discretion to end the public health emergency protections for COVID-19 countermeasures. If he were to do so, it’s unclear how COVID-19 vaccine injuries would be handled.

There is evidence that Kennedy may try to address COVID-19 vaccine injuries using a different federal program, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which was established by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

VICP is used for vaccines routinely recommended for children.

In June, Kennedy said in an interview with Tucker Carlson that he plans to beef up the government’s compensation efforts for the COVID-19 vaccine-injured by making vast changes to the VICP.

“We just brought a guy in this week who is going to be revolutionizing the [National] Vaccine Injury Compensation program,” Kennedy told Carlson.

“We’re looking at ways to enlarge the program so that COVID vaccine-injured people can be compensated … we’re looking at ways to enlarge the statute of limitations,” which is currently limited to three years.

“A lot of people don’t discover their injuries till after that,” Kennedy said.

The program has other flaws, Kennedy added, including that it has no discovery process, no rules of evidence and historically had corrupt leadership. “We’re going to change all that. I’ve brought in a team this week that is starting to work on that.”

The Defender asked HHS if the agency plans to end PREP Act coverage for COVID-19 countermeasures before the end of 2029, and also if, when or how the agency planned to transition COVID-19 vaccine injury claims from CICP to VICP.

An HHS spokesperson said the agency “does not comment on future or potential policy decisions.”

If COVID-19 vaccine injuries were handled by VICP, it’s unclear how the program would fund those claims.

The VICP gets its funds from a $.75 excise tax on vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends for routine administration to children, but COVID-19 shots have never been subject to that tax under federal law.

Congress must repeal the PREP Act

Even if COVID-19 vaccines are no longer covered by the PREP Act, other vaccines are, and others may be in the future.

Currently, diseases that have been declared public health emergencies covered by the PREP Act include mpox, pandemic influenza, anthrax and Zika. If vaccines were mandated to fight these diseases, those injured by the shots could face the same fate as those injured by COVID-19 vaccines.

Congress must act to repeal the PREP Act, said Children’s Health Defense’s CEO Mary Holland in a recent letter to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Holland wrote:

“There are rumblings, and even more alarmingly, government assurances that new pandemics are on the horizon.

“The PREP Act keeps drugs, tests, injections, and other covered countermeasures from having to navigate the free market. Ignoring safety is endemic during a pandemic, especially when there is no downstream liability for manufacturers.”

On July 15, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill to repeal the PREP Act.

According to a press release, the proposed legislation:

• Fully repeals the liability shields and compensation fund provisions under the PREP Act.
• Restores civil remedy rights under federal and state law for those harmed by pandemic products.
• Ensures applicability to current and future lawsuits, including pending appeals.
• Rescinds unused federal funds set aside for PREP Act-related injury claims.

The bill has yet to go up for a vote.

In June 2024, Moms for America and individual plaintiffs who were injured by a COVID-19 vaccine, or whose loved one suffered injury or death from a COVID-19 vaccine, sued HHS, Becerra and then-President Joe Biden in a bid to strike down the PREP Act.

The lawsuit alleges that the act violates the U.S. Constitution. The courts have yet to rule on HHS’s motion to dismiss.

Exact number of COVID vaccine-injured difficult to pin down

Estimating the true number of people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines is difficult since VAERS, co-managed by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is “passive,” meaning it relies on people who believe they were injured to submit a report.

The reports require verification before they can be confirmed as vaccine-related injuries or deaths.

Anyone — including a vaccine manufacturer outside the U.S. — can file a VAERS report.

For instance, although 1,665,735 reports following a COVID-19 vaccination have been filed as of July 25, that number includes foreign reports, meaning those filed outside the U.S., according to OpenVAERS, a private organization that posts VAERS data.

A search for non-foreign reports shows a count of 1,026,503. Using this figure, the number of COVID-19 injuries that weren’t life-threatening or didn’t result in permanent disability or death is just under a million.

However, VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

All figures in this article are based on the best available information and do not account for any duplicate reporting or underreporting.

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/over-1-million-covid-vaers-reports-cicp-fail-accept-compensation-applications/