A nurse shows a vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Santo Tomas Hospital, in Panama City, Panama February 17, 2021. REUTERS/Erick Marciscano
12/29/2021- 10:19 p.m.
Health officials in New Zealand believe a 26-year-old man’s death may be linked to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The man died within 2 weeks of his first vaccine dose, according to Bloomberg News.
An early review shows that the probable cause of death was myocarditis, which is a rare side effect of the vaccine that inflames the heart muscle wall.
“With the current available information, the Board has considered that the myocarditis was probably due to vaccination in this individual,” New Zealand’s COVID-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board said in a statement to Bloomberg on Monday.
The board said that “COVID-19 infection can itself be a cause of myocarditis as well as other serious illnesses and it remains safer to be vaccinated than to be infected with the virus.”
The man’s death marks the second in New Zealand that may be linked to COVID-19 vaccines, Bloomberg reported.
In late August, a woman died from myocarditis, which the board said was likely due to vaccination.
Two other people — a 13-year-old child and a man in his 60s — have also died with potential myocarditis, though they may not have been related to vaccination.
“The benefits of vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 continue to greatly outweigh the risk of such rare side effects,” the board told Bloomberg.
The World Health Organization has said myocarditis is “very rare” but has been reported after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to a late November update.
The cases have been more common in young men ages 16-24 after the second dose of the vaccine, typically within a few days after vaccination.
