The spending bill provides for more than $15 million for administrative expenses for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Trust Fund, which provides funding for the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

That program is designed to “compensate vaccine-related injury or death petitions for covered vaccines administered on or after October 1, 1988,” according to the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA).

Republican Representative Dan Bishop pointed to that section of the omnibus spending bill as part of a series of tweets on Tuesday that offered a critique of the government funding plan.

“Last year’s administrative expenses for the vax injury trust fund were $13.2 million— now it’s $15.2 million,” Bishop said. “That’s a 15% increase. Anticipating a 15% increase in vaccine injuries?”

“It also authorizes ‘sums as may be necessary’ for vaccine injury/death claims,” he added.

That section of the omnibus spending bill refers to “sums as may be necessary for claims associated with vaccine-related injury or death with respect to vaccines administered after September 30, 1988.”

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) does not cover COVID-19 vaccinations and HRSA’s website explains that COVID vaccines are covered under the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

CICP is not mentioned by name in the omnibus spending bill. The $15.2 million for VICP is a relatively small amount of the $1.7 trillion proposed government spending.

The omnibus spending bill is supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and is likely to pass before Friday and prevent a government shutdown.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill to fund the government once senators have approved it.

Bishop did not make reference to COVID-19 vaccines in his tweet but other social media users pointed to sections of the bill providing funding for vaccine injuries and appeared to connect that to COVID shots.

Twitter user @gosuprime21 pointed to another section of the omnibus spending bill that provides for more than $31 million for “reimbursement of expenses of the Department of Justice associated with processing cases under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986” and that money would also be appropriated from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund.

“More interesting Omnibus bill stuff: if the government is so confident in COVID vaccines, why did they allocate about 32 million dollars for lawsuits pertaining to vaccine injuries? Really makes you think.” the Twitter user wrote.

“The omnibus bill contains millions of dollars for vaccine injuries. Yet we are told the vaccines are ‘safe and effective,’” tweeted user Julie Shirey Satterfield.

However, compensation related to COVID-19 vaccines is covered by CICP and the law firm mctlaw has said that CICP is “currently the ONLY way to get compensation for a COVID-19 vaccine injury.”

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program covers vaccines like the flu shot, MMR, DTap (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis [whooping cough]), HPV, pneumonia, and other childhood vaccines, mctlaw said.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program provides “compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines,” according to HRSA, and is a “no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website that deaths after COVID-19 vaccination are rare and that reports of adverse effects after vaccination, including deaths, “do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.”

“The benefits of COVID-19 vaccination continue to outweigh any potential risks,” the CDC says.

The CDC also notes that more than “657 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through December 7, 2022” and 17,868 preliminary reports of death following vaccination were received through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Newsweek has asked the HRSA for comment.