It is a difficult day today for the vaccine injured who have struggled to be heard. The following statement is from Caroline Pover who is the chair of trustees at the charity UKCV family. The charity will also be making a statement in response to the report.
COVID INQUIRY REPORT PUBLISHED THIS THURSDAY
This is a big week for our charity and the thousands of people and families that we support. Because this coming Thursday, The Covid Inquiry publishes its report and recommendations for Module 4: Vaccines & Therapeutics. I write this so you know how much you have to fight to get help if something goes wrong …
We started working on contributions to the Inquiry in April 2022. For eighteen months, a dedicated team of severely ill and bereaved people — entirely voluntarily — produced a 77,000-word witness statement and supporting material. We have been represented by Hudgells Solicitors, the same law firm who represented clients in the Post Office Scandal, the Manchester Arena bombing, the Hillsborough disaster, and the contaminated blood scandal. In January 2025, our witness statement was made public, and our charity’s founder was questioned on it during hearings. It has taken fifteen months for the Inquiry to produce its report and recommendations.
We have been involved in the UK Covid Inquiry for FOUR YEARS. Four years of waiting for an official response to the loss of our health, livelihoods, homes, families, friends, savings. Four years of grieving someone we love. Four years of living without any care pathway, financial support, or a culture of compassion. Four years of seeing many of our fellow sufferers deteriorate. Four years of being on suicide watch for each other.
Our witness statement made it extremely clear that we needed immediate support. During the January 2025 hearings, numerous government and healthcare officials admitted to there not being a pathway in place to support those injured or bereaved by a Covid vaccine. Despite our barrister’s closing request for an interim report and urgent measures to be put in place, there STILL isn’t a pathway in place for those injured or bereaved not just by the Covid vaccine, but by ANY vaccine. There never has been.
Throughout these four years our charity has done the work that the government and NHS should have been doing. We have not stopped. Our membership has grown to 2,700. Every week, new people find us after years of thinking they were suffering alone or that their symptoms were all in their head. Finding an entire community of us can be so overwhelming for people that we now run orientations to ease them into a new sense of safety.
Also throughout those four years, we have reached out to hundreds of MPs, journalists, and healthcare executives, asking for help. Time and time again we have been told to wait for the Inquiry to tell those MPs, journalists, and healthcare executives what to do. The Inquiry in itself has been an obstacle to care.
But it has not been an obstacle to compassion.
I have personally seen the culture toward vaccine damage change dramatically during the past four years. The old lady who once crossed the street from me now talks about how rushed it all was. The man who vehemently promoted the jabs on his social media now says he will never have another vaccine — any vaccine — again. The young woman who has sworn off all vaccines in solidarity for those who were harmed by the Covid ones. The new parents who are questioning every vaccine their doctors are recommending. The nieces and nephews who saw their auntie become a shadow of her former self. All of these people are not only questioning their own health choices, but now have a level of understanding and compassion for the vaccine-injured and -bereaved that they never had before. While the government, the media, and the NHS ignored us, we didn’t give up … we kept on going, and in doing so, we changed the culture around vaccine damage.
Now it’s their turn.
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WATCH THURSDAY’S REPORT at midday: https://www.youtube.com/@UKCovid-19Inquiry
READ THE REPORT: https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/reports/
READ OUR EVIDENCE: https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/documents/inq000474462-witness-statement-provided-by-charlet-crichton-on-behalf-of-ukcvfamily-dated-17-10-2024/
WATCH OUR FOUNDER: https://www.facebook.com/reel/630499366409488
