The National Assembly approved a bill that would provide state compensation for illnesses or adverse reactions that occurred after the Covid-19 vaccination by presuming causality.
Besides, a petition has also been filed to establish a “death code” to categorize cases of death after Covid-19 vaccination.
The Special Act on Compensation for Damages Caused by Covid-19 vaccination, proposed by Rep. Kim Mi-ae of the ruling People Power Party, passed the National Assembly's plenary session on Wednesday. The special law provides that if a disease or adverse reaction occurs after Covid-19 vaccination, the causal relationship between the vaccination and the disease can be presumed.
To presume a causal relationship, three requirements must be met: there must be a temporal connection between the vaccination and the disease; it must not be impossible to infer that the disease was caused by the vaccination based on medical theory or rules of thumb; and the cause must not be unknown or caused by something other than the vaccination.
In addition, a Covid-19 Vaccination Damage Compensation Committee was established to deliberate and decide on matters related to Covid-19 vaccination compensation. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) has 120 days from the date of the claim to decide whether to compensate and 90 days to appeal. If the decision to compensate was made before the law was enforced, it was included in the supplementary provisions to appeal within one year.
“It took four years from the bill's introduction at the 21st Assembly to its passage in the plenary session,” Rep. Kim said. “It is a symbolic legislation that shows the government's attitude of taking full responsibility for the people who have trusted and followed the government's quarantine policies. We expect it to be an opportunity to increase public acceptance of government quarantine policies in future pandemic situations.”
The need for a new death code to categorize cases of death after Covid-19 vaccination has also been raised.
Recently, a petition was posted as a motion on the National Petition Board to create a code to categorize deaths due to Covid-19 vaccination and another to categorize deaths due to infectious diseases so that the cause of death can be clearly distinguished. At 7 p.m. on Thursday, 1,733 people had agreed to the motion.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people who developed symptoms, including acute immune reactions, multisystem inflammatory syndrome, thrombosis, and myocarditis after vaccination, which led to death, are not included in the official death statistics because they are not detailed,” said the petitioner, identified only by his surname Kang who professed herself as a vaccination victim.
“Infectious disease-related deaths are counted under broad criteria, which inflates the number of deaths, and there are cases of post-vaccination deaths being incorrectly registered as infectious disease deaths, so accurate coding is needed,” Kang said.
For Covid-19 vaccination-related deaths, Kang said, there is a need for new codes that categorize the causes, including acute immune response, multisystem inflammatory syndrome, blood clots and clotting abnormalities, myocarditis and pericarditis, autoimmune disease manifestations, and other vaccine-related deaths.
Infectious disease death codes should also be further categorized into deaths due to complications from underlying conditions, deaths due to acute reactions to the infection itself, and deaths due to inadequate treatment or medical errors to prevent Covid-19 vaccination deaths from being incorrectly registered as infectious disease deaths.
Notably, Kang called for enacting a law requiring all healthcare organizations to report Covid-19 vaccination death codes and infectious disease death codes. She added that criminal penalties for underreporting should be increased to prevent data distortion. She also added that autopsy recommendations should be mandatory for infectious disease deaths.
Kang maintained that the system should be improved to automatically check the vaccination history for the last five years in cases of sudden death from unknown causes. The date of vaccination, manufacturing number, and symptoms that occurred after vaccination should be transparently managed and reflected in the evaluation of the cause of death.
“By ensuring data transparency, post-vaccination deaths can be categorized to protect victims and identify the cause,” Kang said. “Fairness can be ensured by distinguishing between deaths caused by infections, underlying diseases, and medical errors. I call for reclassifying infectious disease death codes.”