KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 — A post-mortem indicates that a Penang Hospital nurse had died from a heart attack, not from an allergic reaction to a Covid-19 vaccine, said the Ministry of Health (MOH).
Penang state health department director Dr Asmayani Khalib said the 45-year-old nurse was found unconscious on March 17, five days after the woman took a Pfizer-BioNTech shot on March 12.
“An autopsy shows that the cause of death was a heart attack and there were no signs of anaphylaxis or allergic reaction. Therefore, the death was not connected to Covid-19 vaccination,” Dr Asmayani said in a statement today.
She added that observation after the Penang Hospital nurse’s Covid-19 vaccination on March 12 showed the woman was stable.
“The officer only complained about soreness at the injection site, the left arm, after the jab but she worked her shift as usual in the hospital.”
The Penang state health department director also noted that the nurse, who had hypertension, had complained to her husband about breathing difficulties the day before she died.
However, the woman did not seek medical treatment nor did she file a complaint to the Covid-19 vaccination team. She fell unconscious on March 17 and later died in Sultan Abdul Halim Hospital in Sungai Petani, Kedah.
As of March 17, a total of 367,213 people in Malaysia have received their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. An adverse reaction or death occurring after inoculation may not necessarily be caused by the vaccine, as these incidents may have happened anyway regardless of vaccination.
