An 88-year-old man died in a Jerusalem hospital on Tuesday, hours after receiving the coronavirus vaccine, with doctors emphasizing in a statement that the patient had serious pre-existing health problems.
The man received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the afternoon, as part of Israel’s mass inoculation program. He later passed out at home.
Paramedics called to the scene worked to resuscitate him as they rushed him to Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center, where doctors later announced his death. Discouraging any link between shooting and death, the hospital said the man suffered from “chronic, complex and difficult” health conditions, without specifying.
Get the daily edition of The Times of Israel by email and never miss our top news.
It was the second death reported hours after an elderly Israeli man received the vaccine.
A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a Maccabi Healthcare Services vaccination center in Modiin on December 24, 2020. (Yossi Aloni / Flash90)
On Monday, a 75-year-old man received a vaccine injected in his hometown, Beit She’an, in the north. After waiting a mandatory half hour at the medical clinic, he was released home, saying he was feeling well. Some time after arriving home, he lost consciousness and was later declared dead due to cardiac arrest.
The Health Ministry said a preliminary investigation indicated that his death did not appear to be related to the shooting. The man suffered from heart disease and cancer, and had suffered several previous heart attacks, the ministry said.
The man’s family also asked not to associate his death with the vaccine, the Hebrew media reported.
Even so, the Director General of the Ministry of Health, Chezy Levy, announced the formation of a commission of inquiry to investigate the incident.
A man receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Jerusalem on December 24, 2020 (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
In a separate incident on Monday night, a man was taken to the Terem emergency medical clinic in Jerusalem after suffering a severe allergic reaction about an hour after receiving a dose of the vaccine.
The 46-year-old man does not suffer from pre-existing illnesses, but is allergic to penicillin, Terem said in a statement. The clinic said he suffered anaphylactic shock as a result of his allergy, but that he received medication and his condition had “stabilized”.
The Pfizer vaccine is not made with the coronavirus itself, which means that there is no chance of anyone getting it from the injections. Instead, the vaccine contains a genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the protein enriched on the virus’s surface. No major safety problems were discovered in the injection tests and only common side effects related to the vaccine, such as fever, fatigue and pain at the injection site, were found.
Before Israel began its mass inoculation program, research showed that a significant percentage of the population was reluctant to be vaccinated, apparently because of concerns that the rapid rate at which coronavirus vaccines were created and tested may have occurred at at your expense.
Israel administered its 500,000th coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday night, crossing the mark just over a week after the start of its vaccination campaign.
Authorities said they plan to reach 150,000 vaccinations a day over the course of this week, and Netanyahu has set a goal to have about 2.25 million Israelis – nearly a quarter of Israel’s 9.2 million population – vaccinated by the end of January. .
Israel currently ranks first globally in vaccinations per capita, slightly ahead of Bahrain and significantly ahead of other countries in the world, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data.