Kansas woman died after having allergic reaction to COVID-19 vaccine: autopsy

A 68-year-old Kansas woman died after having an allergic reaction to the COVID vaccine, according to an autopsy obtained by The Eagle on Wednesday.

A Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesperson did not immediately know if she was the first death in Kansas related to the vaccine.

Deaths from the vaccine are rare.

Jeanie Evans of Effingham struggled to breathe after receiving her first Moderna vaccine on March 23, 2021, in Jefferson County, the autopsy says. She was taken to a hospital and died the next day. The autopsy filed in Jefferson County said she died as a result of anaphylaxis from the COVID-10 vaccine. Anaphylaxis is an allergic reaction.

The autopsy says she had a medical history of “hypertension, environmental allergies ... and reactive airway disease (not asthma), with previous anaphylactic reaction to albuterol.”

Evans started to have a reaction 15 to 20 minutes after receiving the vaccine. She began to complain of “feeling as though her airway was becoming blocked,” the autopsy says.

EMS responding to the call found she had “severe respiratory distress with labored breathing and stridor and poor oxygen saturation.” She was intubated and taken to the emergency room at Stormont Vail Health in Topeka. She arrived just before 5:30 p.m.

“Upon arrival to the hospital, (Evans) was reintubated for airway tube positioning and … lost pulses,” the report says. “CPR was initiated and … return of spontaneous circulation was achieved” but her condition continued to decline.

The family elected not to have her resuscitated at 11:40 a.m. on March 24, 2021. She died at 11:55 a.m.

One of her sons told The Topeka Capital-Journal that the family plans to file a lawsuit.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says anaphylaxis, which is an allergic reaction, has occurred in five out of every 1 million people vaccinated for COVID.

The CDC doesn’t have any figures of death related to anaphylaxis.

It does mention deaths related to a blood clot, called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), from people who have had the vaccine. There have been 57 cases of TTS from the 18.2-plus million people who have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Nine people have died, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC, there have been 12,122 reports of death related to the 543-plus million doses of vaccine given the U.S.

“Reports of adverse events ... following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem,” the CDC says.

This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 1:47 PM.