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Parents to sue Serum Institute over daughter's alleged Covishield death

Father says that AstraZeneca's admission of vaccine's rare side effect is 'too late'

Covishield

(Photo: Reuters)

Nandini Singh New Delhi

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The parents of a woman who died after receiving the Covishield vaccine will file a case against the Serum Institute of India (SII), the Economic Times (ET) reported about the Indian company that manufactures the Covid-19 inoculation for UK’s AstraZeneca.

The news comes after AstraZeneca acknowledged in a court that the vaccine can lead to a rare side effect.

Venugopalan Govindan, father of Karunya, who died post-vaccination, said AstraZeneca's admission was "too late," following numerous casualties.

"AstraZeneca and SII should have stopped the manufacture and supply of these vaccines when 15 European countries either suspended or age-limited them due to deaths from blood clots that happened in March 2021, within a couple of months of the rollout of the vaccine itself," said Govindan.
 

The parents have lodged a writ petition seeking redressal and the appointment of an independent medical board to investigate their daughter's death. When approached for comment by ET, SII declined to engage on the matter.

According to reports, AstraZeneca has conceded in legal documentation that Covishield, "can, in very rare cases, induce TTS (Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome)."

"In India, Covishield, which inoculated 90 per cent of the populace, has performed commendably," a senior person from a national Covid working group told ET, downplaying concerns about adverse reactions.

Govindan further alleged companies and the government had promoted Covid-19 vaccines as "safe and efficacious" without adequate data.

"The regulatory bodies that approved it and subsequently didn't intervene to stop it when data emerged about the dangers are all culpable in the death of my daughter and countless others who have died after taking this so-called vaccine," Govindan said.

"If sufficient remedies aren't obtained, for the sake of justice and to prevent recurrence of this atrocity that was perpetrated in the name of public health, we will file fresh cases against any and all of those perpetrators because of whose actions the deaths of our children ensued," he added.



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First Published: May 01 2024 | 12:05 PM IST

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