BioNTech vaccine hearing postponed after petition to change judge

Hamburg: The first hearing in a German court case against BioNTech over side effects allegedly caused by its COVID-19 vaccine was postponed on Monday after the plaintiff's lawyer petitioned for the case to be heard by different judges.

The lawyer Tobias Ulbrich of law firm Rogert & Ulbrich asked for the case to be heard by a group of judges and for the currently-assigned single judge to be recused for bias, Ulbrich and a spokesperson for the regional court in Hamburg told Reuters separately.

The court in the northern city of Hamburg said a decision on the request would take a matter of days, without providing a new date for a hearing. BioNTech could face hundreds of similar cases in the country.

It has said that the Hamburg case, brought by a woman who is seeking damages for alleged side effects including upper-body pain and fatigue, was without merit.