Overview
- The inquiry’s fourth report, published Thursday, praises the vaccine and treatment rollout as an extraordinary feat and acknowledges a small number were seriously harmed.
- It urges urgent changes to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, including lifting the cap to at least £200,000 and removing the 60% disablement threshold.
- Vaccines saved about 475,000 lives in England and Scotland by March 2023, the report finds, with rare risks judged far outweighed by the benefits.
- The NHS-led RECOVERY trial identified dexamethasone in June 2020 as a life‑saving treatment, with an estimated 22,000 UK lives saved by March 2021 and about one million worldwide.
- The report highlights lower uptake in some deprived and minority communities and a lack of domestic manufacturing, and sets five fixes that include a new expert panel, targeted outreach, better uptake tracking, regulator access to health records, and compensation reform.