A healthy Italian woman has died after receiving her first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination and although the autopsy has ruled out a link, her family remains sceptical.
English teacher Annamaria Mantile, 62, passed away in the southern Italian city of Naples on 2nd March, four days after receiving her jab.
The Naples Public Prosecutor’s Office immediately launched an investigation into the woman’s death to determine if it was in any way linked to the vaccine.
An autopsy has since concluded that the previously healthy teacher died of bowel infarction, an irreversible injury to the intestine resulting from insufficient blood flow.
The medical emergency caused Annamaria to undergo haemorrhagic shock and cardiac arrest, which proved fatal.
The results of the autopsy concluded that there was no link between Annamaria’s death and the vaccine, even though her initial symptoms appeared just hours after the jab.
The late teacher’s family members remain sceptical of the autopsy results. Her brother, Sergio, told local media: “AstraZeneca’s involvement was immediately ruled out, but it is not explained why.
“Now I ask myself ‘how can correlation with the drug be ruled out two hours after administration?’
“Could the contractions, as a reaction to the drug, have caused the bowel constriction? Or did they happen completely independently?”
The University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccination has previously caused controversy in the European Union.
France, Germany and others originally restricted its use in over-65-year-olds, ostensibly due to a lack of data about its effectiveness in older people.
A number of politicians, including French president Emmanuel Macron and an anonymous figure in Germany’s health ministry, claimed that the jab was virtually ineffective in the elderly.
Such claims have since been debunked by real-world data from Public Health England.
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Story By: William McGee, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
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