A 39-year-old single mother in Utah, with no underlying medical conditions, died four days after receiving her second dose of the Modern COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report.
Kassidi Kurill, mother of Ogden’s son, received the vaccine because of her work as a surgical technique for several plastic surgeons, KUTV reported.
“She was absolutely fine with it. In fact, she said to all of us, ‘Okay, you should all understand,’ ”her father, Alfred Hawley, told the outlet.
Kurill felt a pain in his arm after the first injection of Moderna, but had no other side effects.
But things took a tragic turn after she received her second dose on February 1.
“She came early and said her heart was racing and she felt she needed to go to the emergency room,” said Hawley.
When they arrived at the emergency room, Kurill was throwing up. Hawley, a retired fighter pilot, told doctors that his daughter had just received her second shot.
“They did a blood test and immediately came back and said that she was very, very sick and that her liver was not working,” he told KUTV.
Kurill’s older sister, Kristin, who lives in Arizona, said she knew her sister had gone to the hospital, but the speed with which she deteriorated was “so unexpected”.
She thought her sister would get an IV and be home in an hour, but Hawley knew they wouldn’t be home anytime soon.
“It was a total shock, and I was even afraid to tell my wife,” he told the news agency.
Kurill was soon flown to the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, a trauma center, because his liver was failing and a transplant was considered to be his best chance of survival.
Kristin jumped on the first flight to Utah, but was not allowed to enter the hospital because of coronavirus protocols, so she waited with her sister Emilia’s daughter, 9, while the family waited for a miracle.
Kurill’s parents offered to donate part of their livers, but they never had a chance to offer the life-saving gift when their daughter’s liver, kidneys and heart stopped.
She died 30 hours after arriving at the hospital.
An autopsy was performed on Kurill’s body, but the state coroner’s office was unable to comment on the case due to privacy laws, according to KUTV.
Dr. Erik Christensen, Utah’s chief coroner, told the station that it almost never happens to prove the injury caused by the vaccine as a cause of death.
“Did the vaccine cause this? I think that would be very difficult to demonstrate at autopsy, ”he said.
Christensen said he could think of just one case where a vaccine could be listed as a cause of death in an autopsy report – an immediate case of anaphylaxis, a serious allergic reaction, in which a person died almost instantly after being inoculated.
“Without it, it would be difficult for us to say definitively that this is the vaccine,” he said, adding that a more likely outcome would be a lack of answers – or an “incomplete autopsy”.
He added: “Almost every vaccine or anything that you treat someone with, when you inject something, has the potential for a negative result.”
An autopsy could also identify a cause of death that the family was unaware of, including undiagnosed pneumonia, cancer or an unknown heart disease.
Kurill’s family hopes to get answers, but realizes that they may never know for sure what their loved one has cost.
Although side effects of the vaccine are common, the resulting deaths are extremely rare, according to a report by Fox News.
According to the CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Notification System, approximately 92 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the United States between December 14 and March 8.
Of those 92 million, VAERS received 1,637 death notifications (0.0018%) among people who received an injection, the network reported.
“So far, VAERS has not detected patterns of cause of death that indicate a safety problem with the COVID-19 vaccines,” says the CDC on its website.
Kurill’s daughter – whose father is a civil servant and a member of the National Guard who travels on business – will continue to live with her grandparents.
Emilia, who is known as Millie, was the one who wanted her mother’s story to be told.
Since then, she has seen her grandfather decide to take the second dose of the vaccine.
“Millie was begging me not to do this,” said Hawley, a 69-year-old man with diabetes. “There is always risk.”