BRITISH model who suffered a ‘very rare’ blood clot has died days after being given the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in Cyprus.
Stephanie Dubois, 39, suffered a “serious thrombotic episode” after being given the jab in the town of Paphos.
Charalambos Charilaou, Cypriot health service spokesman, said that her death would be investigated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
But it has not been confirmed yet if it is linked the jab.
Dubois received the first dose of the vaccination on May 6 and posted on Facebook: “So I had the vaccination today! I hate needles, today was no exception . . . And now I feel horrendous . . . pizza and bed for me.”
On May 14 she was taken to hospital with breathing problems.
She wrote: “Woke up feeling fine and then within an hour I had full body shakes, all my joints seized and I was struggling to breathe and was cold to the bone with a persistent headache and dizziness.
“Mum and dad came to look after me and took me for a Covid test, which thankfully was negative . . . but it still doesn’t explain what the problem is.
Maybe I’m having a prolonged reaction to my Covid jab last week.”
By May 19 she had slipped into a coma and “was not expected to come out of it”, according to Andrew Powers, a friend.
Local media reported that she had suffered a brain haemorrhage and died on Saturday afternoon.
Health officials at Cyprus’s main state hospital in the capital, Nicosia, said that she had no underlying health conditions.
In March, Cyprus suspended AstraZeneca shots pending a review by the EMA.
Germany, France and other EU member states followed suit but re-introduced the jab on March 18.
Only two other people in Cyprus developed blood clots after the AstraZeneca vaccination. Both had underlying health issues and neither died.
In April, the EMA confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine continued to outweigh the risk of side effects.
The EMA also reminded the public that of the very few cases of blood clots, most were combined with low levels of blood platelets and were within two weeks of vaccination.
Most cases reported have also occurred in women under 60, based on the currently available evidence, specific risk factors have not been confirmed.
The EMA say their scientific assessment underpins the safe and effective use of Covid-19 vaccines.
One plausible explanation for the combination of blood clots and low blood platelets is an immune response.
‘VANISHINGLY RARE’
Britain’s medical watchdog, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), said the overall incidence of blood clots with low platelets after a first dose of Astrazeneca is put at 10.5 per million doses, and about one in a million for a second dose.
There have been 49 deaths in the UK, meaning the odds of someone getting a fatal blood clot is 2.1 per million.
But this goes up to 4.5 for those aged 30 to 39.
While England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam has previously described the blood clots as “vanishingly rare” but “quite serious”.
The same kind of blood clotting cases have been seen in Europe.
And there are cases in the US after having the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – which uses the same technology as the AZ jab but is not being used in Europe or the UK
sunit
