Request

When a claim is received following the death of a person, is a death certificate confirming the cause of death as due to a Covid 19 vaccine sufficient evidence to award a payment?

Or would it still be necessary to request all medical records even when the cause of death is confirmed as due to a Covid 19 vaccine?

Response

All data as of 2 April 2024.

To claim on behalf of a person who has died you must be managing their estate. You must therefore send us a copy of their death certificate and one of the following documents:

• Letter of administration • Last Will and Testament • Grant of probate • Deed of Trust

We are unable to progress a claim until we have received the required documents.

After we receive your completed claim form, we check to make sure that the vaccinated person is eligible to apply for a Vaccine Damage Payment. If they meet the eligibility criteria, we contact the healthcare providers you have told us about and we ask them to send us copies of their full medical records.

We aim to make sure that all claims are in the strongest possible position before being put forward for assessment. We therefore need a full set of medical records from the healthcare providers listed on your claim form. This is so the independent medical assessor can look at all available evidence to make a full and fair assessment on whether, on a balance of probabilities, the vaccine has caused the death.

After we receive their full medical records, we prepare the claim and send it to an independent, third-party medical assessor.

All claims are assessed on a case-by-case basis by an independent medical assessor. Medical assessors are General Medical Council (GMC) registered doctors with a license to practice and at least 5 years' experience.

The independent medical assessor will look at the claim form, the vaccinated person’s full medical records, clinical research, epidemiological evidence, and the current consensus of expert medical opinion. The assessor will advise if they are entitled to a Vaccine Damage Payment, based on whether the vaccine, on the balance of probabilities, caused the death.

The independent assessor will also consider whether the vaccinated person had any pre-existing conditions that were not caused by the vaccine.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01831