The occupation injuries and diseases Compensation Fund has clarified its conditions for accepting side-effects from a COVID-19 vaccine as having happened on the job – and so to fall under its mandate, Business Insider reports.
According to last Friday’s Government Gazette notice, this is only when an employer makes vaccination “an inherent requirement” of an employment contract; and/or when the results of an occupational health and safety risk assessment conducted by the employer make an employee’s vaccination obligatory.
Business Insider reports that the fund added it would treat vaccine claims under its usual rules for compensation after injury, illness, or death, but only after half a dozen requirements are met.
The injured employee must have received a vaccine approved in South Africa, which could exclude workers who received jabs abroad, or in countries that use a wider range of vaccines than SA, including Zimbabwe.
That approved vaccine must be linked to the injury suffered. To do so, the fund wants to see the “chronological sequence between the vaccine inoculation and the development of symptoms and clinical signs”.
Those symptoms must be “generally recognised as side effects of COVID-19 vaccine”. The fund may then still require further tests, “to assess the presence of abnormalities of any organ affected”. But before getting to such evaluations, the Compensation Fund has to be convinced that an employer demanded the COVID-19 vaccination in the first place, and had reason to do so.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
SAHPRA: As yet, none of post-vaccination deaths caused by the jab
COVID-19 no-fault compensation fund details still vague
No-fault compensation fund rules released for 'rushed' comment