BC man of 1st Canadians compensated for injury due to COVID-19 vaccine

BC man of 1st Canadians compensated for injury due to COVID-19 vaccine.

Being able to walk, albeit with orthopedic braces, is not something Ross Wightman takes for granted. Wightman, 40, suffers from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare condition that affects the nervous system. A husband and father of two young boys, the Okanagan man said he was diagnosed with the disorder last spring, less than two weeks after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Just days after getting the shot, he started to experience extreme back pain. “The pain got worse and worse,” Wightman said. He was diagnosed with the disorder and spent the next 67 days in the hospital. Now, after nearly a year of paperwork and medical submissions, Wightman is one of only a handful of Canadians to have the illness validated as a vaccine-related injury by the federal government.