An elderly Pittsburg man who developed an unusual blood clot after the taking both doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine has died, doctors in Pennsylvania have reported. This is the first known case of severe blood clotting believed to be linked to Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.
So far it was being believed that only adenoviral vector-based vaccines, such as the AstraZeneca vaccine, caused this rare blood clot but now the same has been found with the Moderna coronavirus jab. However, no such reaction has so far been linked with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine, also known as the BNT162b2 vaccine.
Moderna Vaccine Raises Doubt
On Monday, scientists and doctors at the Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh reported a case of a 65-year-old man who was admitted to the hospital with a serious form of blood clotting known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS). The rare blood clot condition was detected just 10 days after his was given the second and final dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.
Two days later, the unnamed patient, who also suffered from chronic hypertension and high cholesterol levels, died. Doctors have now concluded that the patient's symptoms were consistent with vaccine-induced clotting, also known as VITT.
According to the doctors, the patient had no known exposure to heparin, a medication that has been associated with TTS. The team was unable to identify any other causes of TTS in the patient. "The distribution of thrombosis, especially the cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, was characteristic of VITT or TTS," the doctors wrote in a journal article published at the Annals of Internal Medicine.
A Rare Example
The death of the patient in Pittsburgh is the first known case of blood clotting linked to a vaccine based on messenger RNA, or genetic material located in the cell, which includes those developed by Moderna and Pfizer. So far it was thought that TTS, or vaccine-induced TTS (VITT) was caused only by the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Reports of blood clot, including some fatalities have been reported among recipients of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. However, those vaccines use different technology and are instead based on a deactivated adenovirus.
The doctors at Allegheny Health said their research "complicates" theories that prior clotting cases were specifically caused by adenovirus-based vaccines, as some experts have previously speculated. The two-dose Moderna jab was approved after a study demonstrated it is 95 percent effective at warding off severe coronavirus complications.
Blood clot has been reported as an adverse reaction to Covid-19 vaccines but that is not the only vaccine-related complication that has been detected in people. The CDC last week reported over 1,200 cases of a rare disorder known as myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, in those who took the Pfizer and Moderna shots, which comes to about 12.6 per million doses.
That said, scientists have stressed the benefits of being immunized far outweigh any risks, with the coronavirus itself being linked to life-threatening clots. They have concluded that such rare events should not discourage others from receiving the benefits of these vaccines.
