Japan’s Ministry of Health informed on Monday that a 49-year-old Japanese man has died last month after getting a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from a batch that was since recalled over stainless steel contamination, Japan Times reports.
Japanese health authorities have confirmed that the man has died the morning after receiving a second dose of Moderna Covid-19 jab on August 11 but noted it’s still unclear if his death was linked to the vaccination or if he had any underlying health conditions that might have contributed to his sudden passing.
The 49-year-old is the third person in Japan to die after receiving Moderna jab after two other men, both in their 30s, have died earlier days after taking their second Moderna shot though it was later reported that vials used to vaccinate them contained no foreign particles so there’s currently an investigation into their deaths.
Japan has recalled more than 2.6 million shots of Moderna’s Covid vaccine after foreign particles were found inside some of the vials- 1.63 million doses originating from three different lots, and another million doses later in Okinawa and Gunma prefectures. Later analysis revealed that the substance which was initially found in several dozen unused vials is stainless steel.
The investigation of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Moderna’s Japanese distributor, later showed that the metal shavings most likely came from machinery at the facility where the contamination happened but insisted that the particles pose no danger to patients since stainless steel is routinely used in medical materials and that and it does not adversely affect the benefit/risk profile of the product.
Oxford University’s Our World In Data project results shows that more than 47% of Japan’s 126 million people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with another 9% receiving only one dose of the three vaccines Japan has approved for use- Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca
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