AUBURN (CBS13) – The Placer County Sheriff’s Office announced on Saturday that a person tested positive for the virus in late December and died hours after receiving the vaccine on Thursday.
Now, there are questions from the community about the safety of the vaccine. A woman from Auburn says she witnessed the tragedy first hand.
In a Facebook post, she said she saw her grandfather’s aide, a 56-year-old man, get the vaccine at a health center for the elderly on Thursday.
“Twenty minutes later, he realized that his legs were tingling and he was short of breath. He was taken in an ambulance … 1 hour later he was in the ICU on a respirator and three hours later he died ”, she wrote.
She goes on to say, “Hearing this broke my families [sic] heart, because he took care of my grandfather for years and was there helping when we came to say goodbye. “
Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease specialist at UCLA, said there had been no deaths associated with the vaccine yet. Klausner said that people should not be so quick to place the blame before there are answers about the cause of death in this case.
He says that if a person develops an allergic reaction 15 minutes after receiving the injection, there is a possibility that the reaction could be fatal.
Meanwhile, the county coroner is conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death and the sheriff’s office is not confirming the age, sex, where it happened or what vaccine they received.
Dr. Klausner said there were some allergic reactions to the vaccine, including difficulty breathing or fainting, which can happen 15 minutes after the dose is administered. But he says the risk is low – about 1 in 250,000 shots.
Several agencies are investigating, including the California Department of Health.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, acknowledged on Monday that they were investigating, but also emphasized that the people who received the Modern and Pfizer vaccines largely did not have a significant reaction.
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