In Lithuania, the death of a person vaccinated against COVID-19 was recorded: he died a few minutes after vaccination

The health center of the person who vaccinates has reported a suspected adverse reaction to the vaccine.

According to IWT chief Gytis Andriulionis, a 77-year-old man died in the Pasvalys district on Thursday morning during the vaccination. He was vaccinated with AstraZeneca. This was the first vaccination.

The man has had concomitant cardiovascular disease and death is not associated with vaccination, as mentioned.

“The Medicines Control Agency does not have data to suggest otherwise. In other words, vaccination is not related to death. But since death occurred a few minutes after vaccination, we see the need to explain this publicly. That information is recorded by the Drug Control Service, as well as all reports of adverse events, ”said G. Andriulionis.

At the same time, the IWT headline added: “The event itself, the death, occurred yesterday morning. And our service received the notification of this event this afternoon, 2 hours ago. The medical institution was contacted and additional information was collected. “

According to him, this is not the only case of death.

“The European Medicines Agency is aware of all the deaths in the vaccinated groups. However, to date, there are no known cases in which the death was caused by the vaccination process. We know in which institution the death occurred. We know personal data, but, respecting the privacy of loved ones, we do not reveal it. We can only say that it is a man, 77 years old and with comorbidities, “said G. Andriulionis at the press conference.

Rugilė Pilvinienė, senior advisor to IWT’s Pharmacovigilance and Poisoning Information Division, said deaths after taking drugs are not often reported.

The person was vaccinated on an outpatient basis. As R. Pilvinienė explained, the man died of clinical death within minutes of vaccination while waiting in the hallway. The person was resurrected, but life could no longer be saved.

“It was more of a random phenomenon than links to processes that may have occurred during vaccination. All serious adverse events and reactions are evaluated by us, – said R. Pilvinienė, adding: “This is a sudden cardiac death, a death due to an acute heart disorder.”

The IWT spokeswoman explained that after specialists assess an adverse reaction, it is referred to the European Pharmacovigilance Base. This database stores all the information on adverse reactions. It is evaluated by specialists from the European Medicines Agency and can be obtained from representatives of pharmaceutical companies.

“Some time ago, the case of Norway was widely covered by the press. This is a group of very old people who lived in institutions due to their age and illness, they died shortly after vaccination. There were no links that the vaccine caused the death. They were very vulnerable and sensitive people and, therefore, their diseases were determined at the end of life, ”said R. Pilvinienė.

Professor Aurelija Žvirblienė, an immunologist at the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU GMC), stated that after the third phase of AstraZeneca clinical trials, in which more than 20,000 people participated. subjects, there were no deaths.

“There was one death, but then it turned out to be in the placebo group. From a scientific point of view, I can say that the fact that a person died during or a few minutes after vaccination would indicate that it was caused by other diseases, other causes. Because it would be very difficult to explain what could have happened during the vaccination for the vaccine to cause death. This is most likely due to comorbidities. “There are more cases of this type in the world, because now we are talking about vaccinating the most vulnerable elderly,” said the professor.

However, according to experts, people with cardiovascular disease should not be afraid to get vaccinated against the coronavirus; the vaccine does not affect the worsening of these conditions.

According to R. Pilvinienė, if the vaccine really affects human health and its immune system, and the side effects after the vaccine appear fairly quickly, an anaphylactic reaction can be suspected. In this case, a person may complain of general weakness, sudden rash, low blood pressure, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea.

“The appearance of such symptoms could lead us to assume that death is related to a vaccine due to an anaphylactic reaction. In this case, there were no such phenomena and there is no suspicion,” said R. Pilvinienė.

Delfi recalls that between the start of the COVID-19 vaccination in December and now, according to the State Agency for Drug Control (IARC), there have been around 800 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccine. Most of these reactions followed the Comirnaty vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNtech. However, this does not mean that this vaccine has the most side effects; it has been vaccinated in most of the people in Lithuania, so there are more reports

“This is a key document for the specialist who monitors adverse events. The same information will be provided in the prospectus. In practice, what is written in the medical documents is reported, ”said R. Pilvinienė.

According to her, the most common and recorded reactions to the vaccine were: pain at the injection site, fatigue, headache, muscle and bone pain, which is known as a bone fracture, fever, swelling of the lymph nodes.

There are other reactions. The greatest variety of reactions, as well as the number of reports, come after Comirnaty. However, it also vaccinated the largest number of people: more than 163 thousand. So it would be a mistake to think that this vaccine causes the most side effects – the more people get vaccinated, the more information about side effects.

At present, the AstraZeneca vaccines, according to the interlocutor, have been injected in just over 14,000 doses, and Moderna around 10,000.