German specialists probing 10 deaths of people vaccinated against Covid-19

Specialists from Germany's Paul Ehrlich Institute are looking into the deaths of 10 people who passed away soon after having been inoculated against the novel coronavirus disease, Brigitte Keller-Stanislawski, the head of the institute's department of safety of medicinal products and medical devices, said on Thursday.

According to the medical expert, the deceased were aged from 79 to 93, all with antecedent diseases. The time between vaccination and death ranged from several hours to four days.

"Until yesterday we had nine cases; we have to wait for the data from Lower Saxony [about another alleged case], then there will be 10. We are talking about patients in extremely grave condition, with multiple diseases, who were receiving palliative treatment. I have already said that we are studying these cases ... Based on our current data we assume they died from their main diseases, coinciding in time with the vaccination," Keller-Stanislawski said at a press conference.

In late December, Germany launched a vaccination campaign against COVID-19, using the vaccine developed by companies Pfizer and BioNTech. As of this day, 842,000 people have received the vaccine. The first ones to get vaccinated are those over 80, residents and staff at nursing homes as well as medical personnel.

The institute also reported six anaphylaxis cases. So far, there have been 325 cases of side-effects allegedly related to the vaccine, including 51 severe ones. Keller-Stanislawski stated that those results are within expectations and correspond to the US vaccination statistics.