A British health official said on Tuesday that the sudden death of a 14-year-old girl was very unlikely to have been caused by the vaccine she was given hours before she died.
Natalie Morton, who died in a hospital on Monday only hours after being the given the Cervarix vaccine, which protects against the virus that causes cervical cancer, had a “serious underlying medical condition which was likely to have caused death,” said Caron Grainger, the director for public health at Coventry City Council, the city where the girl went to school.
“We are awaiting further test results which will take some time,” Grainger said in a statement. “However, indications are that it was most unlikely that the ... vaccination was the cause of death.”
The Cervarix vaccine consists of three injections given over a six-month period, and the shot Morton received at her school had been her first. Morton appeared to be healthy before being given the shot, and her dramatic death sent a ripple of concern across the country.
The council, which has declined to give any further details of the death, did not elaborate on Morton’s “underlying medical condition.”
Officials have temporarily suspended Coventry’s vaccination program and quarantined the batch of vaccine given at the school.
Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has delayed a decision on whether to approve Cervarix. A decision on the vaccine was expected on Tuesday. However, GlaxoSmithKline UK, which manufactures Cervarix, said the death in Britain did not influence the FDA’s decision to extend its review.
The National Health Service in Coventry said it stopped the vaccination program for two days to give staff administering the vaccine training in how to answer questions from anyone concerned about its safety.
“We fully expect to resume the program in the coming days,” it said in a statement.
The state-run National Health Service began offering the Cervarix vaccine to teenage girls last year, and more than 1.4 million doses of the vaccine have been given out so far under the program.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS