A 43-year-old woman from Plymouth had several blood clots and died less than two weeks after she was given the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Tanya Smith, 43, a childminder with three children of her own, was taken to hospital with severe stomach cramps days after her first jab, on March 21.
Kenneth Edwards, her partner, said that she had felt “pretty rough” for a couple of days after the jab and called 111 after waking up in pain one day.
Smith was taken to Derriford Hospital where doctors found blood clots in her arteries. On April 3 she had a heart attack and died. An inquest will determine the circumstances surrounding her death.
The case is under investigation by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), but the link between the vaccine and her death has not been confirmed.
Edwards decided to speak about his partner’s death after hearing about Lisa Shaw, a BBC journalist, who died in Newcastle after developing blood clots following a jab.
He said: “I have no doubt in my mind that her death was related to the Covid jab. If Tanya had been offered any other vaccine, I really do believe she would have been fine.
“People look at the statistics and see how small they are, and I think a lot of people still think that all this is scaremongering. But for me, this is absolutely not scaremongering. I know what happened. Tanya was a healthy woman before she had the Covid jab, and then it all happened so quickly. If I was told I was having the AstraZeneca vaccine, in light of what has happened, I would say, ‘I don’t think so, you’ll have to book me in for another one.’
“I understand the reasons why Tanya had it. She did it to protect us, her family, and the children that she was a childminder for.”
People aged under 40 in the UK are being offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports of extremely rare blood clots on the brain coupled with a low platelet count.
The MHRA says that the benefits outweigh the risk for most people. It is not proven that the vaccine causes clots but it said the link was getting firmer.
