Washington: Lost in the US launch of the coronavirus vaccine is a fact most don’t know when they roll up their sleeves: In rare cases of serious illness from the shots, the injured are blocked from suing and steered instead to an obscure federal bureaucracy with a record of seldom paying claims.
Housed in a nondescript building in a Washington, DC, suburb, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Programme has just four employees and few hallmarks of an ordinary court. Decisions are made in secret by government officials, claimants can’t appeal to a judge and payments in most death cases are capped at $370,376.