Man died of blood clot after getting AstraZeneca Covid jab early

• Alex Reid was logged as having a BMI of almost 69 because of a clerical error
• He received jab weeks before risks of clotting in the under-30s became known
• READ MORE: AstraZeneca faces £255m compensation bill for ‘defective’ vaccine

A healthy 28-year-old man died after he was given the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine by mistake because an error in his medical records meant he was considered morbidly obese.

Alex Reid, an operations controller from Leeds, ‘did not understand why’ he was invited to get the vaccination early in March 2021 as a man in his late 20s who was otherwise healthy.

But he was given the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine just weeks before the government warned that people under the age of 30 should be given an alternative jab because the AZ shot was linked with an increased risk of blood clots.

Tragically, he died three months later. A coroner’s inquest has since concluded he was mistakenly invited forward for the inoculation because his GP records from 2004 – when he was just 11 – listed him as having a BMI of 68.97.

Coroner Oliver Longstaff has recommended adding ‘validation rules’ to GP record-keeping systems to stop ‘obviously erroneous’ information from being filed.

Alex Reid died of a blood clot after receiving the AstraZeneca jab early. He was erroneously flagged as being a vulnerable person because of an error in his GP records

A medic prepares a dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic. The jab was later linked to a greater risk of blood clots in the under-30s

The error was caused by a clinician recording Mr Reid’s height at the age of 11 as being 145cm (4ft 9ins). His weight was then also entered as 145kg (319lbs).

The coroner ruled that if Mr Reid’s BMI had been recorded properly, he would not have been flagged for early immunisation and would not have been put forward for the vaccine before its risk factors for the under-30s were known.

He wrote: ‘When Alex was invited to receive his vaccination early, he did not understand why, and no one was able to tell him.

READ MORE: Covid vaccine maker AstraZeneca admits for first time its jab CAN cause rare side effect in tense legal fight

‘If the obviously erroneous BMI had not been recorded or had been challenged at the point of entry by the relevant IT system, Alex… would not have died when he did.’

The inquest heard that designing a system to flag such errors in BMI ‘would not have been feasible’ at the time of the pandemic.

But the coroner has challenged healthcare technology companies to incorporate checks for obvious errors into their software in future.

A copy of his report has been sent to the chief medical officers of health technology firms EMIS, TPP and Cegedim, each of which provide record-keeping software for  GP practices, as well as to top bosses in NHS England and doctors’ unions.

Addressing them directly in his report, the coroner added: ‘In my opinion action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe you or organisation have the power to take such action.’

Each organisation has 56 days to respond to his recommendations.

The UK began rolling out its vaccination programme in December 2020, with the government boasting of the ‘unprecedented speed’ with which it was implemented.

Vaccines were initially targeted at those most vulnerable to Covid-19’s effects: particularly the elderly, disabled and those with pre-existing health conditions.

Mr Reid was vaccinated on March 21 because of his seemingly vulnerable status – though medical staff could not tell him why he had been put forward early.

And he received his jab just weeks before official advice was issued stating that people under the age of 30 should not receive the British-developed vaccine as their first dose due to the risk patients might suffer clots.

The UK’s joint committee on vaccines and immunisation (JCVI) said in April 2021 that the AZ vaccine – then the most widely used in the country – had been linked to 79 blood clots out of 20million jabs administered.

The AstraZeneca jab was the most widely used in the UK during the initial rollout of the vaccination programme – before it was linked to a risk in blood clots

Researchers believe the rare side effect occurs due to the modified cold virus lurking in the jab having an adverse effect on platelets in the blood, triggering clotting

The graph shows the cumulative number of Covid jabs dished out in the UK since the pandemic began, the percentage of each age group which has had a jab (bottom left) and the number of each Covid vaccine brand dished out

On May 18, Mr Reid received another dose of AstraZeneca, following the official advice that those who received an AZ jab for their first dose should do the same for their second.

He died just over a month later on June 29. The cause of death was recorded as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis – a blood clot in the brain – and ‘Covid-19 vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia’.

His inquest had heard from his parents, Halina and Antony, who said their ‘happy, healthy, precious and beloved’ son’s death was ‘unacceptable, immoral and fundamentally wrong’.

READ MORE: An 18-year-old aspiring paramedic, a rock musician and an award-winning BBC radio presenter: The ‘victims’ of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine

They told the Telegraph last year: ‘This error has impacted both our emotional, psychological and physical health and has left us now childless, with no family and no future capacity for peace or true happiness. It has destroyed us.’

AZ has finally admitted there are links between the AZ jab and the blood clot condition thrombotic thrombocytopenia, also known as thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), in recent court filings.

The vaccine manufacturer is being sued by the families of dozens of people who were allegedly killed or maimed as a result of blood clots they say were caused as a side-effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Cambridge-based AstraZeneca, which is contesting the claims, acknowledged in a document submitted to the High Court in February that its vaccine ‘can, in very rare cases, cause TTS’. The admission could lead to pay-outs on a case-by-case basis.

About 50million doses of the jab were dished out in the UK in total, while official data suggests at least 81 Brits have died from blood clot complications apparently linked to the AstraZeneca jab A further unconfirmed number have been injured.

Further Covid vaccine rollouts have either minimised use of the AstraZeneca jab and/or phased it out entirely in favour of mRNA alternatives like those made by rival pharma giants Pfizer and Moderna.

With health officials not ordering any more doses, this effectively means the jab has all but been withdrawn in the UK.

The risk of TTS following AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine is thought to be in the region of one in 50,000. However, AstraZeneca’s jab is credited with saving some 6million lives globally during the Covid pandemic.

An AstraZeneca spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘Our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems. Patient safety is our highest priority and regulatory authorities have clear and stringent standards to ensure the safe use of all medicines, including vaccines.

‘From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects.’

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