A worker at a shoe factory in northern Vietnam has died, after receiving a second shot of one of China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines, local health authorities said on Friday. This makes it the Fourth person to die of the vaccine
The victim, a 30-year-old woman, was among a group of 400 workers vaccinated against COVID-19 with Sinopharm’s Vero Cell vaccine at Kim Viet Shoe Company in Northern Thanh Hoa province on Tuesday.
Sixty workers experienced marked side effects following their inoculations, including five who suffered severe health complications. Those suffering were taken to hospital but three died shortly after receiving their second dose, while nine others were still receiving treatment.
Experts from the Ministry of Health on Thursday said they had failed to detect any trace of mishandling during the transportation and storage of the vaccine doses and stated “anaphylactic shock’’ as the cause of the deaths.
On Tuesday, health officials also vaccinated other workers in the area with the Vero Cell vaccine, but only those at Kim Viet Shoe Company suffered fatalities.
The batch of COVID vaccines used at the factory was no longer being administered.
The deaths were likely to further fuel negative sentiment of Chinese-made vaccines in Vietnam, with fears already going viral in social media, three months ago, when the government decided to import the vaccines.
Vietnam has administered a single COVID-19 vaccine dose to 116 million people, of a total population of 98 million. More than 46 million people had been fully vaccinated, around 50 per cent of the population