Most Coronavirus Vaccination Side Effects Likely Not Serious Enough for Workers' Comp

Some state legislatures, such as Idaho’s in February, have introduced bills to provide workers compensation for accidents or injuries related to coronavirus vaccinations provided by employers. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), COVID-19 vaccine injuries are rare, and the side effects are usually mild, including pain, redness or swelling at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever, and nausea. While rare and unusual, the more serious effects that could be experienced would be myocarditis and pericarditis, anaphylaxis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and death, as indicated in a CDC update on Feb. 14, 2022. For an injury from a coronavirus, vaccination to be considered eligible for workers' compensation would require medical intervention of some kind, according to Dr. George W. Rutherford, professor of epidemiology at the School of Medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.

The vast majority of side effects are inconsequential. “A side effect is your arm is sore,” he told Business Insurance. “A side effect is a temporary, mild to moderate reaction, and it causes no lasting harm,” he said.

James Ostendorf, a vaccine injuries attorney with Dane Shulman Associates LLC in Boston, says the coronavirus vaccines are most likely no different than any other vaccine. The issues most people have with their vaccinations are likely to have nothing to do with the coronavirus vaccine itself.

“The injuries we are seeing have nothing to do with COVID. These are general injuries that happen to people who just get vaccines,” he said to Business Insurance. “It comes from the fact that you are being injected with some vaccine; they are injuries to muscles and tendons when they are given the vaccine in the wrong place.”

Overall, the volume of claims right now stems from the magnitude of the COVID-19 vaccination program. Millions and millions of people getting vaccinated.

“These injuries have been happening for decades,” said DaniePogoda, managing attorney at Dane Shulman. “The thing is not that these are new injuries, but that all these people have had these vaccines all at once, which has never happened. … Something like this is making that very, very tiny percentage of people who get (a) vaccine injury seem like suddenly it’s everywhere, because of the numbers game you are playing.”

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