Vaccine Injury Settlements and Compensation Awards Topped $240 Million in 2021

Federal Vaccine Court received an influx of injury claims in 2021, including problems with Gardasil HPV vaccine and other vaccine injuries

Federal officials have released new data about the financial compensation and settlements awarded for claim submitted through the Vaccine Court, indicating that more than $250 million was paid last year for vaccination injuries nationwide.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) published the updated Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Data and Statistics this month, providing new figures on vaccine injury and death claims associated with vaccines recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicating that there was a 72% increase in the number of vaccine injury lawsuits filed in 2021, when compared to the previous year.

The Vaccine Court was established to provide a “no fault” system to compensate individuals and families for injuries linked vaccines, with more than 25,000 petitions filed since 1988 and approximate $4.8 billion in vaccine injury settlements and awards paid over the life of the program.

The report indicates that a recent and drastic spike has been seen in the number of vaccine adverse event claims filed in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), with 2,057 vaccine injury claims were filed in 2021, compared to 1,192 filed in 2020, marking the largest number of vaccine injury or death claims filed since 2003.

While COVID-19 may have played a role in the decreased number of claims filed in 2020, the report found the number of vaccine claims filed in 2021 soared by 72.5% or more when compared to the previous year, and by more than 60% when compared to each year dating back to 2003.

Of the compensation awards provided in 2021, the report indicates 719 cases were granted compensation for a grand total of $244,743,828.52 in compensation for vaccine injury or death claims. The report indicates the amount of compensation and settlement awards granted in 2021 far surpasses the monetary awards given in 2020 by over 12%.

Gardasil HPV Vaccine Lawsuits Have Renewed Attention on Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

The report comes amid a growing number of Gardasil vaccine injury lawsuits that are now being filed nationwide, after individuals go through the Vaccine Court process.

While the HRSA does not outline the amount of Gardasil settlements or compensation awards per vaccine type, the report indicates that there were 633 petitions related to the HPV vaccine filed with the Vaccine Court, of which 17 involved the death of a recipient. Of the Gardasil claims filed in the Vaccine Court, 160 have been compensated, while many of the other individuals not compensated have gone on to file Gardasil lawsuits directly against Merck in the federal court system, as permitted under the program.

Those lawsuits have been filed by teens and young adults left with various autoimmune disorders from Gardasil, including postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), neurological damage and other side effects, which plaintiffs allege that Merck failed to disclose to families and the medical community.

The HRSA report comes just weeks before a panel of federal judges are scheduled to hear oral arguments at the end of this month to determine whether to consolidate all Gardasil HPV vaccine lawsuits filed by individual who were not compensated through the Vaccine Court, after a group of plaintiffs filed a motion seeking to centralize the cases before one federal judge for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

In response to the motion, Merck filed a brief in opposition to the consolidation last month, indicating the JPML should not consolidate the cases because Gardasil claims must first proceed through a Vaccine Court. However, plaintiffs argue that the process has largely shielded manufacturers from liability in return for the allegedly low financial returns they get by providing millions of vaccines to the country, and that claimants are pursuing lawsuits after opting out of the Vaccine Court procedures.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the motion to consolidate the Gardasil lawsuits on July 28 at the U.S. Court House in Seattle, Washington.