BHC wins lawsuit over faulty COVID vaccination of children

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) has achieved a final judgment against the Ministry of Health for improperly vaccinating two children during the December 2021 COVID-19 epidemic and refusing to issue them with a vaccination certificate. The decision of the Supreme Administrative Court was released in early December 2023. The court ruled entirely in favour of the two BHC plaintiffs.

The case is from the COVID-19 vaccination campaign conducted in December 2021. In that period a father took his two daughters – aged 13 and 17 – to be vaccinated. He is convinced of the benefits of the vaccines; his family's priority is to get a certificate because both girls have trips to make, so they can go to school without being tested daily. The three of them go to the Hospital of the Ministry of Interior hospital as the closest to their home. The doctor asks what vaccine they prefer, explaining that Janssen has one dose, and the other vaccines require two doses. The father chooses the Janssen option.

However, when attempting to issue a certificate after administering the vaccine, the doctor found that Janssen's vaccine could not be administered to children. He first recorded in the system that they had been vaccinated with the first dose of Pfizer's vaccine. At the same time, however, the children cannot be given a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine because they have already had a complete course of vaccination and there is no data and no prescriptions for mixing the Janssen and Pfizer vaccines.

After being seized by the mother of the two girls, the Metropolitan Regional Health Inspectorate (MRHI) ordered an inspection to be carried out at the immunisation point at the hospital. Even then, the erroneous entry in the immunisation register was deleted and from that moment on the two children were listed as unvaccinated. However, MRHI refused to enter the correct information in the register and issue a certificate as the software did not allow it due to the age restriction for Janssen.

After BHC took over the case, it asked the health ministry to delete the false entry in the register and issue a certificate. The department refused. The Committee appealed the refusal to the Sofia City Administrative Court and managed to convince the court of the rightness of the claim with arguments from European law. Namely: the girls' rights to freedom of movement and private and family life are restricted. The Ministry's argument is to avoid "creating a bigger precedent" and "legitimising" the mistake.

Following an appeal by the Ministry of Health, the Supreme Administrative Court fully upheld the first-instance decision.

"Despite the passage of time and the removal of the need for travel or school attendance certificates, the national immunisation register must contain correct information. Unfortunately, the mistake made in vaccinating the two girls shows once again the chaotic vaccination process, as well as the overall neglect of children during this period," said Adela Kachaounova, an attorney who led the case of the two children.

This case is in close connection with two other cases that are still pending and have been pursued with BHC's legal assistance – the case against the improper prioritization of vulnerable groups during the COVID vaccination campaign, and the case on behalf of four children who are challenging the lengthy period of online education. Through these cases, the BHC seeks to address the state's inadequate treatment of the most vulnerable people during the pandemic – the elderly, people with chronic diseases and children.