COURT RULING ON VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS

[Anchor Lead]

The first court ruling has come out, ordering state compensation to a man who was diagnosed with cerebral hemorrhage after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine shot. The court said it is difficult not to acknowledge a causal link to the vaccine in the absence of evidence suggesting the disease was caused by other reasons.

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A patient received an AstraZeneca shot last April. He developed a fever the very next day and also felt dizziness and numbness in legs. He went for a checkup at a hospital which alerted his case to a public health center, believing it concerned vaccine side effects. In follow-up examinations, the patient was diagnosed with cerebral hemorrhage and cerebrovascular malformation. His family applied for compensation of some 3.6 million won with the KDCA to cover hospital fees, but was denied payment. The KDCA refused to recognize a causal relationship between his condition and vaccination. It said that numbness in the legs is a main symptom of brain disease and has little to do with the coronavirus vaccine. However the court saw it differently. The court said the patient, who was a healthy person, displayed fever and headaches the day after receiving the shot and the development coincides with vaccine side effects mentioned by the government. The court also mentioned it is difficult to definitively deny an epidemiological connection between the diagnosis and vaccine without evidence suggesting the disease was caused by some other reasons. The ruling implies that adverse effects of vaccination must be acknowledged even though a causal link cannot be clearly proven.

[Soundbite] Hwang Da-yeon(Advisory attorney, KBS) : "The court believed a causal relationship can be deduced based on several indirect facts. This can be seen as setting a standard for other similar compensation requests."

The ruling comes 17 months after the abnormal vaccine reaction was first reported. The KDCA appealed the court decision and vowed to make its case based on medical grounds. Currently, eight other compensation lawsuits are also proceeding related to COVID-19 vaccine side effects.