Judge appointed for The ‘Hood’s child vaccine court challenge this week

The ‘Hood’s fight against the NZ Government rolling out the Pfizer vaccine to 5-11 year olds, intensified this week with the last minute appointment of Justice David Gendall.

Judge Gendall will oversee the judicial review challenging the decision by Medsafe to approve the Pfizer vaccine for children and the government’s decision to roll it out.

He will oversee the two-day review on 27 and 28 June, which is to feature nine expert witnesses who have reviewed the government’s (Crown) evidence and concluded that the injection is still ‘all risk and no benefit’ for children.

Meanwhile The Hood’s legal case manager Katie Ashby-Koppens, who is currently fighting a similar case in Australia, said there was no substantive evidence provided by the Crown that children are at risk of COVID-19.

“The Crown maintains that children are at negligible to no risk of COVID-19, stating regularly that it generally has milder effects in children, with symptoms being similar to a cold. They have not sufficiently substantiated the risk to children from COVID-19, to justify the use of this new class of product in any children,” said Ashby-Koppens.

Ashby-Koppens also noted that Pfizer has not claimed its product is safe, just effective. Only the New Zealand Government claims the product is safe. “The very premise of provisional consent is the drug is only temporarily approved, given not all safety trials were able to be conducted or concluded in time. Therefore, it has never been open to the government to represent safety.”

The ‘Hood contends the Pfizer trials relied upon by Medsafe to approve the kids’ product, used a smaller dose of the Pfizer parent version and was different to the paediatric product Medsafe ultimately granted provisional consent for.

Through Official Information Act requests, the Government confirmed two different ingredients were added to the paediatric product. MedSafe and the Ministry of Health said it was inactive and therefore excused the change in formulation.

“Lead used to be used as an inactive ingredient. If you don’t conduct trials, then you don’t know how a given formulation will interact in the body, so there’s no way that the government can say that any trials were conducted for the paediatric product” said Ashby-Koppens.

The ‘Hood also contends that data from the roll out to 12-to-15 year olds shows there is a risk of myocarditis, but for kids in the younger age group potential rates of myocarditis could not be determined due to the size of the group and length of the kids’ trial.

“The Crown’s evidence also appears to downplay the importance of its adverse event monitoring system on the basis that it is voluntary and anyone can do it.”

Reports to MedSafe and CARM of adverse events related to the Covid-19 vaccines, increased by more than 5000% since their introduction.

“It’s incredible that such significant and risky decisions have been made without any safety trials being done for this product – that is why we are here and it’s the challenge we are bringing,” said Ashby-Koppens.

As a volunteer and charity organisation, The ‘Hood requires further funds to ensure the judicial review goes ahead and its bills are paid.