WELLINGTON: New Zealand reported its first recorded death linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the health ministry said on Monday (Aug 31), after a woman suffered a rare heart muscle inflammation side effect.
The report comes as the country battles an outbreak of the Delta variant of the coronavirus after nearly six months of being virus free. It followed a review by an independent panel monitoring the safety of the vaccines.
“This is the first case in New Zealand where a death in the days following vaccination has been linked to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine,” the ministry said in a statement, without giving the woman’s age.
The vaccine monitoring panel attributed the death to myocarditis, a rare, but known, side effect of the Pfizer vaccine, the ministry added.
The board said the myocarditis “was probably due to vaccination”, according to the ministry. The health ministry said other medical issues at the same time could have influenced the outcome after vaccination.
Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle that can limit the organ’s ability to pump blood and can cause changes in heartbeat rhythms.
Pfizer said it recognised there could be rare reports of myocarditis after vaccinations, but such side effects were extremely rare.
“Pfizer takes adverse events that are potentially associated with our vaccine very seriously,” the company said.
“The benefits of vaccination with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine continue to greatly outweigh the risk of both COVID-19 infection and vaccine side effects, including myocarditis,” Pfizer said.
Regulators in the United States, the European Union and the World Health Organization have said that mRNA vaccines from Pfizer with German partner BioNTech and by Moderna are associated with rare cases of myocarditis or pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining around the heart, but that the benefits of the shots outweigh any risks.
