A 39-year-old single mother in Utah with no underlying medical conditions died four days after receiving her second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report.
Kassidi Kurill, a mother of a child from Ogden, received the vaccine for her work as a surgical technician for several plastic surgeons, KUTV reported.
She was absolutely fine with getting it. In fact, she said to all of us, ‘It’s fine, you all have to get it,’ ”her father, Alfred Hawley, told the outlet.
Kurill had a sore arm after Moderna’s first shot, but had no other side effects.
But things took a tragic turn after she received her second dose on February 1.
“She came in early and said her heart was beating and she felt she needed to go to the emergency room,” Hawley said.
When they arrived at the ER, Kurill vomited. Hawley, a retired fighter pilot, told doctors his daughter had just received her second shot.
“They took a blood test and came back immediately and said she was very sick and her liver was not functioning,” he told KUTV.
Kurill’s older sister Kristin, who lives in Arizona, said she knew her sister had gone to the hospital, but the speed at which she was deteriorating was “so unexpected.”
She thought her sister was going to get an IV and be home in an hour, but Hawley knew they weren’t going home anytime soon.
“It was a total shock, and I was even afraid to tell my wife,” he told the news outlet.
Kurill was soon flown to the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, a trauma center, because her liver failed and a transplant was considered her best chance of survival.
Kristin jumped on the first flight to Utah but was not hospitalized due to coronavirus protocols, so she waited with her sister’s daughter Emilia, 9, while the family hoped for a miracle.
Kurill’s parents volunteered to donate some of their liver, but never got the chance to offer the life-saving gift when their daughter’s liver, kidneys, and heart stopped.
She died 30 hours after arriving at the hospital.
An autopsy was performed on Kurill’s body, but the state medical examiner’s office was unable to comment on the matter due to privacy laws, according to the KUTV.
Dr. Erik Christensen, Utah’s chief medical examiner, told the station that proving vaccine damage as a cause of death is almost never a occurrence.
Did the vaccine cause this? I think that’s very difficult to prove at autopsy, ”he said.
Christensen said he could think of only one case where a vaccine could be listed as the cause of death on an autopsy report – an instant case of anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction in which a person died almost immediately after being vaccinated.
“Otherwise, it would be difficult for us to say definitively that this is the vaccine,” he said, adding that a more likely result would be a lack of answers – or an “incomplete autopsy.”
He added, “Just about any vaccine or anything you do treats someone, when you inject something can have a negative result.”
An autopsy was also able to identify a cause of death that the family was not aware of, including undiagnosed pneumonia, cancer, or an unknown heart condition.
Kurill’s family hopes for answers, but realizes they may never be sure what their loved one’s life has required.
While side effects from the vaccine are common, the resulting deaths are extremely rare, according to a Fox News report.
According to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, approximately 92 million COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in the US between December 14 and March 8.
Of those 92 million, VAERS received 1,637 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received an injection, the network reported.
“To date, VAERS has not detected any patterns of cause of death that would indicate a safety concern with COVID-19 vaccines,” the CDC says on its website.
Kurill’s daughter – whose father is a civil servant and member of the National Guard who travels for work – will continue to live with her grandparents.
Emilia, known as Millie, was the one who wanted to tell her mother’s story.
She has since watched her grandfather decide to get his second dose of the vaccine.
“Millie begged me not to,” said Hawley, a 69-year-old with diabetes. “There is always a risk.”