The Australian Government’s Covid vaccine injury compensation scheme ended on Monday, leaving anyone injured by the ongoing administration of the Covid vaccines without a safety net.

Former federal MP and president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Kerryn Phelps AM, took to social media to comment on the “cruel irony” of the scheme’s closing coinciding with Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ first back-to-back budget surplus in nearly two decades.

“It is a cruel irony that on the day the [Albanese] government announces a $15.8b surplus, the deeply flawed COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme is wound up, having approved only a tiny fraction of the claims made by injured people,” she posted to X on Monday.

In 2022, Dr Phelps revealed in a submission to the federal Long Covid Inquiry that she had experienced “dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations” after her second Pfizer Covid vaccination in July 2021, resulting in a formal diagnosis of vaccine injury.

Dr Phelps, whose wife Jackie Stricker-Phelps was also seriously injured by her Pfizer vaccination, has since been a leading critic of the government’s compensation scheme, calling for it to be improved and extended past its 30 September closing date.

The federal scheme was initially put in place to “provide Australians with quick access to compensation” should they suffer injury or loss of income due to their Covid vaccine. The government also offered to pay funeral costs for vaccine deaths.

The scheme fell short of the government’s promises, however, with injured Australians criticising its narrow criteria, drawn out procedures, and lowball offers.

A recent systematic review of Covid vaccine adverse events found a “gross misalignment” between the 10 conditions that were claimable under the federal scheme, and the evidence base of over 700 serious reactions documented in the medical peer-reviewed literature.

In the same report, researchers from the University of New South Wales, in collaboration with Australia’s peak body representing the Covid vaccine injured, COVERSE, found that applicants to the scheme were required to submit up to 1,000 pages of paperwork, with an average processing time of between 200 and 450 days.

As of 31 March this year, only 324 claims had been paid out, fewer than 10 per cent of the 4,282 claims that had been submitted, Services Australia advised in a Senate committee hearing in June. 3,209 claims had been rejected or withdrawn on advice from Services Australia, and 749 claims were outstanding at the time of the hearing. 

The scheme was extended from its original closing date in April of this year to 30 September to give Australians with a recognised serious vaccine-related adverse effect more time to lodge their claims.

Of over 140,000 adverse events reported to the TGA’s safety surveillance database since the Covid vaccine rollout began, the TGA has said that 22,000 are serious in nature, however not all of the serious conditions reported to the TGA are claimable under the scheme.

Nevertheless, for all its shortcomings, there was a safety net of sorts in place. SBS reports that over $32 million has been paid out in compensation to Australians injured by the Covid vaccines.

That’s a drop in the ocean compared to the $15.8 billion 2023–24 budget surplus, or the $18 billion the Federal Government spent on Covid vaccines and treatments, but it’s also not nothing to Australians left with hefty medical bill, unable to earn a living because of their vaccination injuries.

Now that safety net is gone, and the Department of Health has no advice to offer Australians who may be injured by the Covid vaccines going forward.

Government figures show that 1.6 million Covid vaccine doses were administered to Australians in the past six months. With boosters continuing to be recommended to at risk and older adults every six to 12 months, several million vaccine doses are likely to be administered in the coming year.

A spokesperson for the Department stated that claims submitted by 30 September “will continue to be assessed in line with the Scheme Policy.”

However, the Department did not respond to several requests for comment on what options are available to people who may suffer a serious adverse event to a Covid vaccine in the future, or who were injured before the cut-off date but were not able to submit a claim before 30 September.

Dr Rado Faletič, Director and Co-Founder of COVERSE said that despite a concerted campaign to extend and improve the Covid vaccine compensation scheme with the support of a small group of federal politicians across the political spectrum, “there has been zero response from the current government.”

“Vaccine injured Australians have written to their federal Members and Senators, they’ve written to the Health Minister, they’ve written to Prime Minister. COVERSE has written to all Parliamentarians,” Dr Faletič told Canberra Daily.

“Nobody has responded to the questions we asked. Nobody from the government has made any efforts to engage with us.

“Yet they see fit to let this scheme die, and to see thousands of Australians with no financial support for their desperate situations.”

A Covid vaccine injury class action led by Queensland law firm NR Barbi Solicitor may now be the only avenue available to injured Australians who wish to seek compensation.

1,800 Australians have already expressed their interest in joining the action, which is still open to new group members. 

However, New South Wales mother of three Kara Potter, is not ready to give up on the compensation scheme yet.

Potter, 52, testified about her life-altering Covid vaccine adverse events at a Senate hearing into Australia’s excess mortality in June, describing how a cascade of reactions including pericarditis and inflammation of the lungs and brain have left her disabled, unable to work or drive.

Coinciding with Vaccine Injury Awareness Month, Potter has organised a protest to be staged in Canberra next week, “to let our politicians know that we cannot be forgotten.”

Potter intended to apply for compensation, but her case has been tied up in insurance proceedings which prevent her from applying for to federal scheme until the matter is settled. Now that the scheme is closed, her chance to pursue compensation is lost.

“The Covid vaccine compensation scheme needs to be reinstated – for those who are already injured and who like myself have not yet been able to apply, but also for all those who are to come,” Potter said.

“It is for all Australians that the safety net needs to be reinstated.”

The Vaccine Injury Awareness protest is to be held 10am – 11:30am on Tuesday 8 October at Federation Mall in front of Parliament House, Canberra.