Authorities investigating death of California recipient of COVID-19 vaccine

By Brian Buntz | January 25, 2021

Last week, Norwegian officials raised eyebrows when they announced that they were investigating the deaths of 23 elderly patients who had recently received COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Now, California authorities are investigating the death of a Placer County-based patient who received a COVID-19 vaccine dose on Jan. 21. The patient died hours afterward.

Placer County officials stressed they had not linked the death to the vaccine.

They are planning on conducting an autopsy.

Officials in Florida are also investigating the death of a 56-year-old physician who died 16 days after receiving the BNT162b2 vaccine from Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX).

Pfizer had stressed that it doesn’t “believe at this time that there is any direct connection to the vaccine” in the Florida physician’s death.

Separately, the World Health Organization stressed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is safe following the deaths in Norway. “The current reports do not suggest any unexpected or untoward increase in fatalities in frail, elderly individuals or any unusual characteristics of adverse events following administration of BNT162b2,” the organization concluded in a statement.

While some medical officials have worried that severe allergic reactions could prove fatal for COVID-19 vaccine recipients, such reactions are rare, occurring in roughly 5.5 patients per 1 million. Such anaphylactic reaction can be treated using epinephrine and intravenous fluids.

The Phase 3 clinical trials from Pfizer and BioNTech showed that their vaccine was overwhelmingly safe in individuals 16 to 85 years old.

The Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) Phase 3 study was open to individuals 18 and older.

Filed Under: Drug Discovery and Development
Tagged With: BioNTech, clinical trials, coronavirus, covid-19, COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna, Pfizer

About The Author

Brian Buntz

As the pharma and biotech editor at WTWH Media, Brian has almost two decades of experience in B2B media, with a focus on healthcare and technology. While he has long maintained a keen interest in AI, more recently Brian has made making data analysis a central focus, and is exploring tools ranging from NLP and clustering to predictive analytics.

Throughout his 18-year tenure, Brian has covered an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, medical devices, and drug discovery and development. Prior to WTWH, he held the title of content director at Informa, where he focused on topics such as connected devices, cybersecurity, AI and Industry 4.0. A dedicated decade at UBM saw Brian providing in-depth coverage of the medical device sector. Engage with Brian on LinkedIn or drop him an email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.

Comments

Kimberly Jenkins says

March 14, 2021 at 3:33 pm

I’m a 60 tear old nurse who received my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in February. This month I had blood work drawn and to my surprise my GFR was 57 and Creatinine was 1.02 ( early kidney failure). The strange thing about this is prior to the vaccine in June 2020 my GFR was 89 and Creatinine 83, which is within normal range. Needless to say I’m worried and afraid of this plummet in my kidney function since the vaccine. I forgot to mention, I’m not hypertensive or diabetic and I take no daily medications. Has there been any other cases of decreased organ function post vaccine?

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Dan MacPherson says

March 16, 2021 at 4:17 pm

I am being pressured by friends and family to get vaccinated or risk being treated like a leper. Most of what we know about the vaccines (and the disease) seems to come from statistical analysis, not medical analysis. Don’t tell me the vaccine is safe statistically. Tell me why these people died. Tell me why this disease affects some people disproportionally. People that are outside of the “high risk” groups, I might add. My own opinion is that we do not know enough about the disease to be saying any of this.

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