‘Desperate' man fell from bridge after adverse reaction to Covid booster jab
A 'desperate' man died falling from a bridge after suffering an adverse reaction to the Covid-19 booster vaccination, an inquest heard.
Andrew Heys, 29, reacted 'very badly' and developed a rare autoimmune disease which saw him suffer both mentally and physically.
On the day of his death in March last year, Mr Heys, from Salford, climbed onto a bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal and dialled 999.
Phone signal problems, however, drove him to hang up and the case was 'closed', a coroner heard.
Mr Heys' final words to a GP on the phone were 'forget it'.
Moments later, he fell into the water. His body was found three days later by police divers.
A coroner has now raised concerns into the circumstances of Mr Heys' death after hearing the doctor failed to return the call to the ambulance service as she should have done, which would have potentially triggered a life-saving emergency response.
John Pollard, the assistant coroner for West Manchester, said Mr Heys received his booster vaccination against Covid-19 in December 2021.
It is not clear which brand of jab he was given.
'He reacted very badly to the vaccination and thereafter suffered from Autoimmune Encephalopathy, the effects of which were devastating both physically and mentally,' Mr Pollard said.
The rare condition causes the immune system to attack the brain. According to the NHS, symptoms include confusion or disorientation, seizures or fits, changes in personality and behaviour, difficulty speaking, weakness or loss of movement in some parts of the body and loss of consciousness.
The coroner said that on March 12 2024, just over two years after he received the vaccine, Mr Heys went to a bridge over Manchester Ship Canal in the city centre.
It was reported that Mr Heys called 999 in the early hours of the morning and was put through to an on-call locum GP, named in a January hearing before the coroner's court as Dr Naheed Anjum Noor.
Dr Noor told the inquest that she could not hear what Mr Hays was saying because his connection was bad.
'My understanding was that he doesn't want to engage anymore... he doesn't want help anymore,' she told Mr Pollard, the coroner, adding that she tried to call him back twice without success.
Mr Heys entered the water 8 to 10 minutes after the call ended, the inquest heard in January.
The coroner said Mr Heys' medical cause of death was as a result of drowning and Post-Vaccination Autoimmune Encephalopathy.
Mr Pollard said that during the inquest, he heard that Dr Noor, who worked for out-of-hours provider BARDOC, had 'never been trained' in how to follow the organisation's care pathways.
'This meant that she 'closed' the call after speaking to the patient, rather than returning it to the ambulance service as should have happened,' the coroner said in January, as reported by the Manchester Evening News.
'She was also confused about how she could access the patient's own GP records; again, she said she had not had any training in this regard.
'During the course of the evidence, I heard, yet again, the common complaint that one health professional is unable to access the health records of the patient held by another health professional.
'In this case, the manager of the 111 helpline agreed that the various IT systems do not 'talk to each other'.
'It is of concern to me as to why all bona fide health professionals cannot have access to all health data held anywhere within the NHS.'
BARDOC and the Department for Health and Social Care have 54 days from the date of the coroner's formal prevention of future deaths report to explain how they will change their processes to stop similar deaths from happening in future.
An open conclusion on Mr Hays' demise was reached, with Mr Pollard saying: 'This is a really sad set of events that led to the death of a fit and well and talented young man.
'The pain and embarrassment were such that a previously happy young man was rendered desperate and thinking of ending his own life.
'There's not sufficient evidence to prove an accident or misadventure.'
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