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The legal team at mctlaw is urging Congress to quickly pass the Vaccine Injury Compensation Modernization Act of 2026 (H.R. 9672), legislation that would include COVID vaccine injury claims in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP, and update the program for the first time in decades.
mctlaw attorney Altom Maglio assisted with the bill’s drafting along with React-19, a patient-led advocacy and research non-profit for the COVID-19 vaccine-injured. Maglio has represented vaccine injured clients in the VICP for more than two decades and since the introduction of the COVID vaccine has been working to bring COVID vaccine injuries under the VICP.
“This bill is the single most important step Congress can take right now to help the people that our current system has failed,” said Maglio. “For more than five years, people hurt by the COVID vaccine have been told to wait, told to file paperwork that goes nowhere, and rejected by a program that was never built to handle something like the COVID vaccine. This legislation fixes that. Congress needs to act on it without delay.”
What the Vaccine Injury Compensation Modernization Act does for COVID vaccine injury victims
- Requires HHS to add the COVID vaccine to the Vaccine Injury Table.
- Raises the number of special masters who decide VICP cases from eight to at least ten.
- Increase the compensation cap for death and for pain and suffering to $600,000.
- Extends the deadline to file a claim from three years to five years.
Why COVID vaccine injury compensation reform matters now
“People keep asking why the vaccine we were told to take to protect others is the one vaccine not included in the system built to protect people that suffer severe adverse reactions,” Maglio said. “There has never been a good answer to that question. This bill is Congress finally handling COVID vaccine injuries the right way.”
Currently, COVID vaccine injury claims cannot be filed in the VICP. They can be filed in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, or CICP. This is a program built for rare emergencies, not for a vaccine given to hundreds of millions of Americans. HRSA data as of July 1, 2026 shows the failure of the CICP:
- 14,146 COVID vaccine injury claims have been filed
- 6,562 are still waiting for a decision, more than five years after the vaccine became widely available
- Of the 7,584 claims actually decided, only 62 out of thousands have been compensated, less than point one percent
- 99% percent of claims were denied compensation, almost always for vague administrative reasons, not a lack of merit.
The VICP has paid out more than $5.5 billion dollars to nearly 13,000 injured Americans. Claims are decided by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in a judicial process. In contrast, claims filed in the CICP enter a black hole with no accountability, zero transparency over why claims are rejected, and people have no opportunity to appeal the decision to a Court made by an unknown official.
mctlaw’s ongoing fight to bring COVID vaccine injuries into the VICP
mctlaw has represented vaccine injury clients nationwide for more than 25 years and has led the legal effort to bring COVID vaccine injuries into the VICP, including a federal lawsuit alleging HHS missed its legal deadline to add the COVID vaccine to the Vaccine Injury Table.
“I have sat across the table from clients who lost their jobs, their savings, and their health because of an adverse vaccine reaction, and then watched the government deny them,” Maglio said. “That is not how this system is supposed to work. Congress built the VICP because it understood that when we ask people to get vaccinated for the good of everyone, we owe anyone who gets hurt a fair and honest path to help. This bill restores that promise, and it restores it for COVID vaccine victims most of all.”
How to support the Vaccine Injury Compensation Modernization Act
The legal team at mctlaw is urging lawmakers from both parties to move the bill forward without delay and encourages anyone who has experienced a severe reaction to a vaccine, particularly a COVID vaccine, to contact their representatives in support of the legislation.
About mctlaw, a national vaccine injury compensation law firm
mctlaw is a national law firm representing people harmed by vaccines, defective medical products, and government overreach. The firm has represented clients in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for nearly 25 years and has offices in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Washington, and Sarasota, Florida.
