New Zealand reports first death due to COVID-19 vaccine

New Zealand was one of the first countries to declare itself as COVID-19 free and lifted all the lockdown restrictions in mid-2020. However, it couldn’t stay away from the virus outbreak for a long time as the country is being troubled by the Delta variant now.

As per the latest reports, New Zealand has active cases of over 562 now and the lockdown has been imposed in the country earlier this month. Adding fuel to the current problem, the island country also witnessed its first death linked to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the health ministry, an independent Covid-19 vaccine safety monitoring board reported that a woman lost her life after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The age of the woman is not revealed though. The board considered that the cause of death is myocarditis, which is a rare side-effect of the Pfizer vaccine. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscles which limits the ability of an organ to pump blood and causes changes in the rhythm of the heartbeat.

Pfizer is yet to respond to this case. New Zealand has provisionally approved the use of Pfizer/BioNTech, Astra Zeneca, and Janssen vaccines in the country but so far, only Pfizer has been rolled out for the public.