A 40-year-old man living in British Columbia, Canada last month learned the Canadian government approved his request for compensation for a COVID-19 vaccine injury.
Ross Wightman, a 40-year-old husband and father of two, said it took years of submitting paperwork before the government approved the claim.
He is believed to be among the first of only a handful of people to receive compensation under Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP).
Wightman did not divulge the exact amount of the payout. However, he said he did not qualify for the program’s maximum payout of $284,000.
While there have been 46,149 officially recorded adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines in Canada, only a handful of those injured have received any compensation.
Wightman was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a rare condition affecting the nervous system that left him partially paralyzed, soon after receiving his first and only dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in April 2021, CBC reported.
READ ALSO: COVID vaccine compensation programs ‘Overwhelmed’ as injuries hit record high
Wightman told the National Post he developed severe back pain 10 days after getting the shot. He went to the emergency room numerous times and was admitted on a Saturday when he reported facial tingling.
“By Tuesday, I had full facial paralysis,” Wightman said. “I could blink but I couldn’t smile or show my teeth at all, and had paralysis from the waist down as well.”
He spent 67 days in the hospital before being able to return home. Wightman, who worked as a pilot and real estate agent prior to his diagnosis, said has been unable to return to work.
The hardest thing, though, he told CBC, is being unable to do physical activities — like playing soccer — with his kids.
On May 20, Wightman received a letter acknowledging there was a “probable cause association” between the disorder and his vaccination and stating he would be issued a compensation payout.
The Canadian government, which established the VISP in July 2021, was the only G7 country that did not have a vaccine injury compensation program prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to VISP’s website, 400 vaccine injury claims were submitted in 2021, between June 1 and Nov. 30 — and only five were approved by a medical review board.
While receiving the program’s payout letter was “quite vindicating,” Wightman is not “overly excited” about the payout, which includes eligibility for a maximum income replacement of $90,000.
“The income replacement won’t be what we’ve been used to … so that’s a little disappointing to me,” he said.
Wightman said he plans to appeal the payout amount to the program’s medical review board, which he said failed to take all his symptoms into account.
In addition to paralysis and limited use of his hands, Wightman also experiences loss of feeling in his feet and vision impairments. These other symptoms weren’t included in his injury benefit assessment, he told CBC.