HAMBURG, June 11 (Reuters) – BioNTech (22UAy.DE) will appear in court on Monday to defend itself against a lawsuit from a German woman who is seeking damages for alleged side effects of its COVID-19 vaccine. This is the first of potentially hundreds of cases in the country. The woman, who has exercised her right under German privacy law to remain anonymous, is suing the German vaccine maker for at least 150,000 euro ($161,500) in damages for bodily harm, as well as compensation for unspecified material damage. The regional court in Hamburg is hearing the case, and law firm Rogert & Ulbrich is representing her. The plaintiff claims she <a href="https://news.ad-astra.icu/first-lawsuit-filed-against-biontech-in-germany-over-alleged-side-effects-of-covid-vaccine.html” title=”First lawsuit filed against BioNTech in Germany over alleged side effects of COVID vaccine.”>suffered upper-body pain, swollen extremities, fatigue, and sleeping disorders due to the vaccine. The first hearing is on Monday. Tobias Ulbrich, a lawyer at Rogert & Ulbrich, told Reuters he aimed to challenge in court the assessment made by European Union regulators and German vaccine assessment bodies that the BioNTech shot has a positive risk-benefit profile. German pharmaceutical law states that makers of drugs or vaccines are only liable to pay damages for side-effects if “medical science” shows that their products cause disproportionate harm relative to their benefits or if the label information is wrong. BioNTech, which holds the marketing authorization in Germany for the shot it developed with Pfizer <PFE.N>, said it concluded after careful consideration that the case was without merit. “The positive benefit-risk profile of Comirnaty remains positive, and the safety profile has been well-characterized,” the biotech firm said, referring to the vaccine’s brand name. It noted that about 1.5 billion people had received the shot across the world, including more than 64 million in Germany. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) says that BioNTech’s Comirnaty, the most commonly used in the Western world, is safe to use. In a media briefing last week, the EMA reaffirmed the benefit of all COVID shots it approved, including BioNTech’s, saying in the first year of the pandemic alone, vaccines were estimated to have helped save almost 20 million lives globally. It has said there is a very small risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, two types of heart inflammation, following vaccination with Comirnaty, mainly for young males. Unexpected side-effects after a drug has regulatory approval are rare. The unprecedented speed at which COVID vaccines were developed during the pandemic meant that potential uncommon side-effects may not have been detected as readily as they might have been in traditionally longer trials. EMA has said that safety monitoring had not been compromised during the fast-track assessment. The EMA had registered almost 1.7 million spontaneous reports of suspected side-effects by May, which translates into about 0.2 for every 100 administered doses. Almost 768 million vaccine doses have been administered in the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein…
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