Cinzia Pennino,
a 44-year-old science teacher from Palermo, Italy, phoned her father in late March and asked him to pick her up from school. She lived just a short walk away, but could hardly stand up in her classroom due to intense stomach pain.
It was 11 days after Ms. Pennino had received her first dose of the
PLC Covid-19 vaccine. A week later, she died in the hospital of an extremely rare combination of a serious blood clot, or thrombosis, and low levels of platelets, a blood component that plays a key role in clotting. The sometimes-deadly combination is so rare that scientists don’t know how often it occurs in the general population.
Regulators and scientists in Europe have identified the condition in more than 350 people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot. They haven’t determined whether the shot is causing the clots, but have said there could be a link and have ordered AstraZeneca to list the…