NEW DELHI: In a significant turn of event, trouble seems to be mounting for AstraZeneca and Serum Institute after the parents of a young woman who died allegedly after taking a jab of Covishield are planning to sue the world's largest vaccine maker as well as the British pharma giant that had developed it during the Covid pandemic.
This comes after AstraZeneca's latest admission in court documents in the UK that their vaccine can cause rare side effects that can lead to blood clots and low platelet count.
The Serum Institute of India (SII) manufactured the AstraZeneca vaccine in India under the name 'Covishield' which was administered in mass scale here.
Venugopalan Govindan, whose 20-year-old daughter Karunya tragically passed away in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, said the timing of the admission came too late as so many lives have already been lost.
The distraught parent, in an online post, said that the vaccine should have been stopped immediately by the Serum Institute after as many as 15 European countries had decided to restrict its usage over deaths from blood clots.
He added that the grieving parents are seeking justice in various courts but are not getting a hearing.
"If sufficient remedies aren't obtained, for the sake of justice and to prevent recurrence of this atrocity that was perpetrated in the name of public health, we will file fresh cases against any and all of those perpetrators because of whose actions the deaths of our children ensued. Eight of the victims' families have connected and I am echoing the common sentiments of all of us," he wrote in his X post.
"Serum Institute of India and Adar Poonawalla will have to answer for their sins. For the lives lost," Mr Govindan mentioned in his online post, where the devastated parent also pointed fingers at government authorities for approving the rollout of the vaccine.
Rachana Gangu, who lost her 18-year-old daughter going by the name of Rithaika back in 2021, alongside Mr Govindan had earlier filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking the appointment of a medical board to investigate the deaths of their daughters and prepare a protocol for the early detection of the impact of vaccinations, besides compensation.
It is worth mentioning that AstraZeneca has found itself under fire of late as it already faces a class action lawsuit in the UK over claims in at least 51 cases that its vaccine caused deaths and severe injuries in several cases.
The British pharma giant had recently admitted that its vaccine can cause "in very rare cases, cause TTS". TTS stands for Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, which causes blood clots and a low blood platelet count in humans.
Meanwhile, the UK government, which has secured AstraZeneca from legal action, is yet to intervene in the matter.
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