AstraZeneca is being sued by a woman who claims she was disabled by the company’s Covid-19 vaccine during a clinical trial and that the drugmaker has failed to live up to its contractual obligations to cover her medical costs.
In a complaint filed Monday, Brianne Dressen said she was “the picture of good health” when getting the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine in 2020 at the age of 39 through a Salt Lake County, Utah, clinical trial. In the hours that followed, her arm began to tingle and the feeling spread up to her shoulder, then to her opposite arm. Later, other symptoms followed, including blurred vision, a headache, ringing ears, and vomiting.
According to Dressen’s lawsuit, AstraZeneca had entered into a contract with her in which the drugmaker would cover medical costs for injuries suffered from the vaccine. Dressen said she discovered she had paresthesia, a condition in which nerves are irritated and the body experiences tingling and numb feelings.
A mother of two and formerly a pre-school teacher, she claimed in her lawsuit that some of her symptoms worsened and the condition spread to her legs. In 2021, National Institutes of Health neurologists diagnosed her with “post vaccine neuropathy.”
Dressen is the co-chair of React19, an interest group for people alleging injury from Covid-19 vaccines. Now, she’s suing AstraZeneca over medical expenses and more, arguing she’s still disabled and unable to work and carry on with many activities as she once had.
An AstraZeneca spokesperson said in an emailed statement the company can’t comment on ongoing litigation.
“From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects,” the spokesperson said in Monday’s statement.
The lawsuit, which accuses AstraZeneca of breaching contractual obligations, comes days after AstraZeneca pulled its Covid-19 vaccine off the market.
AstraZeneca has said it was doing so due to a lack of demand and not for safety reasons. The vaccine, however, has faced concerns over its efficacy and safety.
The marketing authorization for the vaccine in the European Union was withdrawn at the company’s request as the vaccine is no longer manufactured or supplied, the company said in a statement last week.
Vaccine injuries are rare but not unheard of. The Department of Health and Human Services has injury compensation programs that shield drugmakers from lawsuits over vaccine injury allegations, including those stemming from Covid-19 shots.
As of April 1, over 10,000 claims alleging injury or death from a Covid-19 shot have been filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, according to the HHS. In a separate lawsuit, Dressen’s React19 and people alleging vaccine injuries are suing the HHS over the program.
And while the CICP would normally block Covid vaccine lawsuits, Dressen’s complaint says she isn’t precluded from suing over AstraZeneca’s contractual obligations with study subjects like herself. And AstraZeneca, the complaint said, “refused to honor their contractual obligations to provide medical care/referrals and cover the costs of the injury.”
Dressen said in an email she had applied for the CICP, though wasn’t eligible as AstraZeneca wasn’t covered by the program.
The case is Dressen v. AstraZeneca AB, D. Utah, No. 2:24-cv-00337, complaint 5/13/24.
