Vaccinated against COVID, they say they suffer from side effects and want to obtain compensation: the BioNTech laboratory, which has developed, with the American Pfizer, one of the main vaccines on the market, has been appearing for the first time in trial since Monday. .
This long-awaited judicial hearing, supposed to last several months, began on Monday with a procedural battle.
“The judge’s impartiality was questioned by the plaintiff’s lawyers,” a court spokesman announced shortly after the start of the hearing.
The defenders ask in particular that the trial be chaired by a college of magistrates specializing in health issues and not a single judge, “which would allow real expertise”, justified one of the lawyers, Marco Rogert.
A next session will therefore take place “in a few days”, according to the lawyer. The court will then decide “whether he remains in this provision for the trial or whether he entrusts it to the chamber”.
Fatigue, stroke, thrombosis
The case is eminently complex. At the end of 2021, a vaccination campaign of unprecedented scale began in the face of a deadly pandemic which has led to the confinement of millions of people and the paralysis of the world economy.
According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), it was estimated that in the first year of the pandemic, COVID vaccines helped save nearly 20 million lives.
But some people claim that they have caused their health to deteriorate.
Legal actions have been launched in several countries, such as France and the United Kingdom.
A few hundred complaints have been filed in Germany seeking recognition of the causal link between this vaccination and the development of pathologies.
The Hamburg court is thus the first to consider a claim for compensation.
The plaintiff said she suffered from effects such as “pain in the upper part of the body, swelling of the extremities, exhaustion, fatigue and sleep disturbances” after receiving the vaccine from the Pfizer and BioNtech laboratories, according to the court.
So many problems “harmful to the work” of this doctor, employed in a hospital, “and who can no longer work the same number of hours” as before, says one of his lawyers, Tobias Ulbrich, to AFP.
“For health reasons”, she was absent during this first hearing. “She who was athletic and who rowed today suffers from chronic fatigue and a lack of energy on a daily basis”, described Mr. Rogert.
She is seeking at least 150,000 euros (about CA$215,000) in damages, according to the court.
Hundreds of plaintiffs
More hearings are to come in the coming months, with the lawyer claiming to represent 250 plaintiffs, “all in good health” before suffering symptoms they attribute to vaccination.
“The symptoms are very different, ranging from stroke to thrombosis and heart disease,” says Joachim Cäsar-Preller, another German lawyer, who represents 140 clients in similar lawsuits.
Of the 192 million vaccines administered in Germany, the Paul Ehrlich Institute of Science received 338,857 reports of suspected side effects, including 54,879 cases deemed serious.
The BioNTech laboratory explains that at this stage, “no causal relationship between the health disorders described and vaccination has been proven in the cases examined”.
The company nevertheless assures, in a statement to AFP, “to take its responsibilities” and “to examine each individual case carefully, on the basis of the information available”.
“The producer is responsible for his product and that is why we are attacking BioNTech,” Ulbrich said on Monday.
A quiet nugget in the biotech industry, BioNtech has gained global fame by partnering with Pfizer to develop a messenger RNA vaccine against COVID-19, which has sold millions of copies.
This innovative technology and the rapid approval of the product due to the health emergency have generated a major wave of skepticism and misinformation about the vaccine, questioning its safety.
” Long road “
The existence of “post-vac” symptoms is nevertheless taken seriously by the medical community in Germany, where several hospitals have set up dedicated consultations.
In addition to legal proceedings, administrative remedies are provided for in the event of disabling vaccination complications. More than 8,000 such requests had been filed by mid-April, and 335 have been accepted so far, according to German media.
The legal proceedings to establish a causal link with vaccines will be a “long road strewn with pitfalls”, recognizes lawyer Joachim Cäsar-Preller.
According to the law, to engage the responsibility of the manufacturers, the side effects must exceed a “justifiable level according to the knowledge of medical science”.
One complainant, Kathrin K., 45, believes her symptoms fall into this category.
She assures AFP that she lost “25 kilos in ten days” after the injection and had to undergo several bowel operations. “I hate being told that I am an isolated case, it is not the case”, insists this former saleswoman.