Central panel confirms first death due to COVID-19 vaccine in India
A 68-year-old man died due to anaphylaxis after he was administered Covishield on 8 March.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 15 Jun 2021 10:50 AM GMT
Hyderabad: India has reported its first death due to anaphylaxis following COVID-19 vaccination, a government panel on Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) said on Tuesday. A 68-year-old man died due to anaphylaxis after he was administered Covishield on 8 March.
The panel had assessed 31 cases approved by the National AEFI Committee on 5 February (five cases), 9 March (eight cases), and 31st March (18 cases).
After thorough review and deliberations, as per data in the first week of April 2021, the reporting rate is 2.7 deaths per million vaccine doses administered and 4.8 hospitalizations per million vaccine doses administered, the AEFI pale said.
It said that for causality assessments, priority was given to death cases. Of the 31 cases assessed, 18 were classified as having inconsistent causal association to vaccination (coincidental - not linked to vaccination), seven were classified as indeterminate, three were found to be vaccine product related in which one died, one was an anxiety-related reaction, and two cases were found to be unclassifiable
The panel said that mere reporting of deaths and hospitalizations as serious adverse events does not automatically imply that the events were caused due to vaccines. Only properly conducted investigations and causality assessments can help in understanding if any causal relationship exists between the event and the vaccine, it said.
In one case reported in Mancherial, Telangana, a 52-year-old woman recovered after hospitalization. The AEFI panel said that she had symptoms of fever, cough, and difficulty in breathing. Her BP was 210/120mmHg. "She was clinically diagnosed to have accelerated HTN with LVF with pneumonia. CT chest confirmed pneumonia. She also had underlying kyphoscoliosis and restrictive lung disease," the AEFI report said.
Meanwhile, a 21-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man who were administered Covaxin recovered from vaccine product related reaction and anaphylaxis, the panel said.
