SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah Department of Health and the Medical Examiner’s Office issued a joint statement Thursday saying COVID-19 is not responsible for any deaths in Utah.
The statement comes after a 39-year-old Utah woman reportedly died shortly after the second dose of the vaccine.
The coroner recently completed investigations into “reported deaths in which the deceased recently received the COVID-19 vaccine,” the statement said, adding that agencies could not legally discuss the details of investigations without the family’s permission.
“The WHO has established that there has been NO death from COVID-19 vaccines in Utah to date,” he said. “The WHO is committed to investigating any deaths falling within its jurisdiction in which the deceased recently received the COVID-19 vaccine.
COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. These are the ways we will end this pandemic.
The statement added that the agencies would continue to investigate the reported side effects of the vaccine and provide “absolute transparency” about them, but insisted that public confidence in the vaccine was “critical”.
To this end, we call on members of the media to wait for all the facts to be known before reporting information that could lead to a decrease in unjustified confidence in these life-saving vaccines.
Statistically, the chance of dying after receiving a coronavirus vaccine is considered extremely low. Anaphylaxis can occur after any vaccine, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but is estimated to occur in about two to five people per million vaccinated for COVID-19 in the United States.
But the vaccine usually has some side effects. These include some related to the vaccination site itself, such as pain and redness; Other common side effects include headache, muscle aches, fever, nausea, and other flu-like symptoms. These side effects usually go away after a day or two.