Vikki Spit, whose fiancé Lord Zion died after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, has become one of the first recipients of funds under England’s vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS).
Spit told GB News on Monday that “after months of campaigning” she was to receive a £120,000 ($160,000) payment following the death of her 48-year-old musician partner and husband-to-be, Lord Zion.
“It’s the first step in the battle,” Spit said. “People can no longer sneer at us and say we’re making stuff up and pretending we don’t exist.
“This isn’t about money as nothing can bring back the people we have lost. This is about recognition,” she added.
“The first payment was confirmed on Friday 16.6 and we expect others to follow in the next few days,” Sarah Moore, a partner at Hausfeld law firm, told The Epoch Times by email.
Hausfeld represents more than 40 families and individuals in England, including those who have experienced a range of severe health conditions and death following the COVID-19 vaccination.
Moore said that in the UK there are currently around “1,300 applicants awaiting an outcome from the VDPS.”
“We also know historically that the acceptance rate for applications is 1.7 percent in the UK. That means that very many of those applicants will be refused an ex gratia payment [or a payment made voluntarily] under the VDPS. That is inevitably going to lead to financial hardship for some families and potentially resentment and vaccine hesitancy going forward,” she added.
The VDPS is a one-off tax-free payment of £120,000 if someone is proven to have been severely disabled or have died as a result of vaccination from diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, swine flu, and more. To be eligible, claimants must meet a 60 percent disablement criteria.
In December 2020, ministers agreed to add COVID-19 to the scheme, to demonstrate “government confidence in the safety profile” of any vaccine being used in the vaccination program.
In March, the government said that it estimated that the process will take on average six months, requiring access to people’s medical notes and their previous medical history, because “while someone may have had a reaction on the day, we cannot say for sure until we have looked at all the evidence that that is a causal link between the vaccine and the adverse event, even though there may be a strong suggestion that it is.”
“It is encouraging that there has now been the first payment from the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, not least that there is now recognition that the COVID-19 vaccine has caused a severe medical condition,” another applicant, Julian Gooddy, told The Epoch Times
Gooddy said that he started to suffer two weeks after taking the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and developed Bell’s palsy with paralysis down one side of his face and mouth, and had difficulty in speaking and blindness in one eye. He said that he was still suffering severe health issues.
He said his issue “has always been the lack of support from the medical profession and from the government in regards to compensation, and a lack of any understanding.”
This is an excerpt from The Epoch Times.
