88-year-old dies hours after COVID vaccination in the second such incident

An 88-year-old Israeli died just hours after receiving the coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday, the day after a 75-year-old Israeli died of a heart attack, also shortly after receiving the vaccine.

In both cases, medical professionals do not believe that the deaths are related to vaccines.

Hadassah University Medical Center explained that the 88-year-old man suffered from complicated and serious illnesses.

The 75-year-old man who died on Monday also had pre-existing illnesses and had already suffered heart attacks, according to the Ministry of Health.

According to reports, the 75-year-old man was inoculated at about 8:30 am at the Clalit Health Services clinic. He stayed at the facility, as usual, for a short period of time to ensure that it had no side effects. When he felt good, the clinic released him.

The initial findings do not show a link between the man’s death and his vaccination, said Levy.

When Pfizer presented its safety data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in early December, it was discovered that two trial participants had died after receiving the vaccine. One of the deceased was immunocompromised, which means that the person’s immune defenses were low.

In response to the report of these deaths, the Israel Midaat Association said that when vaccines are administered to populations at risk, “there may be unfortunate cases. It should not be inferred from this about the safety of the vaccine, but welcome the transparency required from pharmaceutical companies in the process of approving the drug ”.

In large trials of tens of thousands of people, death can occur without any connection to the trial, but companies like Pfizer are forced to report those deaths, Midaat said at the time.

Conspiracy theories surrounding the side effects and alleged dangers of the newly launched coronavirus vaccines have spread rapidly through social media.

The main side effects reported in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials were pain, swelling and redness at the injection site and chills, tiredness and headaches. But these effects usually lasted only a few hours or days at most.

Any potential long-term side effects have not yet been verified, as the vaccines are still new. However, most health officials said they believed that vaccines would not cause long-term harm. In Israel, more than 80% of medical personnel are expected to be vaccinated.

On Wednesday morning, Israel vaccinated 650,000 citizens with the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. According to Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, nearly 152,000 people were vaccinated on Tuesday.

Israel is currently vaccinating medical staff, people over 60 and people with chronic illnesses. He hopes to start vaccinating teachers and school staff later this week or next.

Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman contributed to this report.

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