DH receives one report from HA of suspected serious adverse event following COVID-19 vaccination within 14 days

     The Department of Health (DH) announced that as of 4pm today (April 26), one death case, reported as a suspected serious adverse event following a COVID-19 vaccination within 14 days, had been received from the Hospital Authority (HA) in the past 24 hours. The report did not provide clinical evidence to support that the event was caused by the vaccine.
      
     According to the information provided by the HA, the case involves a 63-year-old man with a history of hyperlipidaemia. He had a seizure at home early this morning and then a loss of consciousness. He was admitted to the Accident and Emergency Department (A&ED) of Kwong Wah Hospital. Resuscitation was performed but in vain, and he passed away the same morning. According to information, he received the second dose of CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccination at Kowloon Hospital 10 days (i.e. April 16) prior to his death, and there was no record that the man complained of feeling unwell during observation.
      
     The DH has contacted the HA immediately upon notification to obtain further information on the incident to facilitate a causality assessment. So far, there is no clinical evidence to indicate that his death was caused by the vaccine. The HA has referred the case to the Coroner. Also, the DH will pass the case, based on the established mechanism, to the Expert Committee on Clinical Events Assessment Following COVID-19 Immunisation (Expert Committee) for conducting a causality assessment.

     According to the World Health Organization, an Adverse Event Following Immunisation (AEFI) is any medical occurrence that follows immunisation and that does not necessarily have a causal relationship with the usage of the vaccine.
      
     Up to and including April 18, 2021, there were about 1 091 100 doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in Hong Kong. During the same period, the DH had received a total of 1 890 AEFI reports (0.17 per cent of all doses administered), including 11 reports of death with vaccination history within 14 days (0.001 per cent of all doses administered). Among these 11 cases, the Expert Committee has concluded no causal relationship with COVID-19 vaccination for three cases and preliminarily considered no association with vaccination for the remaining eight cases. According to the background information provided by the HA, there were about 500 deaths recorded at the HA's A&ED between March 22 and April 18, 2021 (on average about 18 deaths at A&ED per day). The state of death records at the A&ED is provided as a cross-reference to enhance fuller public understanding of cases of the kind recorded on vaccine recipients.