Did the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) officially refuse to acknowledge and pay a portion of the medical costs for victims who claimed COVID-19 vaccine injuries? No, that's not true: the KDCA acknowledges and provides medical expense coverage for a range of health effects related to COVID-19 vaccines. The side effects covered must be scientifically validated, for example in the case of vaccine recipients who develop what is known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an acknowledged side effect in rare instances of certain COVID-19 vaccines. In addition, the KDCA covers certain 'suspected vaccine-induced damages,' which it derives from statistical data associated with reports of adverse health events following vaccination, but for which it does not have scientific or medical evidence to prove causality.
The claim originated from a video (archived here) where it was published by @tubeyou795 on Tiktok, on April 11, 2023, with a caption reading:
KDCA Official Lim Sook-Young said that vaccine-related damages should not be covered by KDCA.
A second caption reads:
Risk of vaccine for recipients
Advantage of vaccine for KDCA
Victims are (already) dead
Neither sympathy nor solution from KDCA
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 18 01:29:03 2023 UTC)
In the press briefing, the KDCA official did not say the agency would refuse to cover vaccine-induced health damage, instead, the briefing and her statements emphasized the protection offered by Covid-19 vaccines and did not address the issue of adverse health events.
Moreover, the former KDCA Chief, Baek Kyung-ran, increased the range of side effects that are considered to be related to COVID-19 vaccine on July 19, 2022, to cover some medical expenses for certain victims of vaccine injury. The KDCA also gave up further court appeals, after the family of one victim won a case against the KDCA for its decision to not recognize the victim's damage was clearly related to the vaccine.
Ji Young-mi, the current KDCA Chief, has tried to address the issue of vaccine injury coverage during meetings with the family of the deceased, who also represented the Covid Vaccine Victims Family Association, upon their request.
