Why the COVID vaccine isn't part of an injury compensation court

From inoculations against polio and smallpox to protections from measles and tetanus, vaccines are critical health care tools that have saved more than 150 million lives in the past 50 years.

This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Jon Wertheim reports on vaccine court, a little-known legal forum that has, for almost four decades, been compensating Americans who say they were injured by vaccines. Whether a person developed chronic arthritis after receiving an MMR vaccine or a shoulder injury resulting from a misplaced tetanus shot, the vaccine court is intended to provide an efficient way to compensate claimants without overwhelming vaccine makers with legal fees.

But for the more than 11,000 people who say they were injured after receiving a COVID vaccine, finding compensation is currently a little more complicated.

In the 1980s, there was a public health scare over the DTP vaccine, an older version of today's DTaP. At that time, families who said their children had been injured by the vaccine successfully sued the drug manufacturers in civil court. This caused all but one of those drug companies to stop production of the DTP vaccine.

Members of Congress and public health officials were concerned that if vaccine manufacturers weren't given some form of legal protection, they might stop other vaccine production, putting the public health at risk. In response, Congress passed a bipartisan bill establishing the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). The program acknowledged both that vaccines could cause injury while also partially shielding drug manufacturers from liability so they would continue to produce vaccines.

Vaccine court is part of that program. It allows people who claim vaccine-related injuries to seek compensation through a simplified legal process. There's no jury in vaccine court. Instead, cases are decided by one of eight judges called special masters. The court is no-fault, which means that petitioners who bring claims don't have to prove negligence. They just prove that more likely than not, their injury was caused by the vaccine.

The money for this program comes from a 75-cent tax added to every dose of recommended childhood vaccinations. Since the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program began, some 13,000 Americans have received more than $5 billion in payouts.

This program is structured around the Vaccine Injury Table, listing vaccines and eligible injuries. When the VICP began, it included six vaccinations. Today, that table has expanded to 16 immunizations, including the seasonal flu vaccine and those that inoculate against H