A 60-year-old woman died from blood clots after receiving Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) COVID vaccine, according to an autopsy report released Sept. 20 by Dr. Michael Caplan, a forensic pathologist for Michigan Medicine.
Sandra Jacobs “appears to have succumbed” to a “rare but nevertheless documented” complication associated with the viral vector vaccine — cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) — Caplan wrote in the summary.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, CVST occurs when a “blood clot forms in the brain’s venous sinuses,” preventing blood from draining out of the brain. “As a result, blood cells may break and leak blood into the brain tissues, forming a hemorrhage.”
This condition brought about “hemorrhagic cerebral infarct,” or stroke caused by brain bleeding, and brain swelling, Caplan wrote.
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The death certificate, obtained after some difficulty by Jacobs’ daughter, Tatum Strieter-Byron, lists the cause of death as “complications of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis” and “recent administration” of a COVID vaccine as the contributing condition.
Caplan deemed the manner of death “natural.” It may also be considered a “therapeutic complication” since this is a known vaccine issue, he wrote. Under “final diagnosis,” Caplan first listed the COVID vaccine.
Jacobs died 13 days after receiving the single-dose J&J vaccine at a CVS pharmacy on April 8 — just five days before federal health agencies temporarily paused the vaccine while they examined an unusual blood-clotting disorder, Michigan Live reported.
Though it took months to confirm it, Strieter-Byron knew from the start her mother died from the vaccine.
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“She was a real person. She is not a piece of, just like fictitious political propaganda, where they’re saying it doesn’t exist,” Strieter-Byron said. “It’s not true. It does exist. She was a real person with a real life.”
On April 13, federal agencies paused J&J’s COVID vaccine, marketed under its Janssen subsidiary, while they investigated the vaccine’s possible link to potentially dangerous blood clots.
During the April 23 meeting, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) said it had identified 15 women diagnosed with rare blood clots, including three who died. Only two of the women were older than 50, with the risk highest in women ages 30 to 39.