A 37-year-old Seattle woman who grew up in the Portland area and graduated from Oregon State University has become the fourth person believed to have died in the United States from a rare blood clotting complication linked to Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to her family and Washington health officials.
The Washington State Department of Health and Public Health - Seattle & King County said Tuesday in separate statements that they believe the woman died of the complication described as “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome,” which is also known as “vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).”
Although neither state nor county officials identified the woman by name, her age “in her late 30s,” date of death and county of residence match information in an obituary published by The Oregonian/OregonLive for Jessica Berg Wilson.
Local public health officials said the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention confirmed the woman’s fatal diagnosis. The death is the first in Washington and the fourth in the nation that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has connected to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to state officials.
The woman received the vaccine Aug. 27 and died 12 days later, on Sept. 7, according to local officials.
An obituary submitted to The Oregonian/OregonLive on behalf of Wilson’s family by a Seattle funeral home harshly criticized vaccine mandates, saying Wilson felt forced into getting the vaccine. A tweet attributing Wilson’s death to the vaccine, along with a link to the obituary, was temporarily labeled “misleading” by Twitter, prompting angry criticism on social media from opponents of vaccine mandates.
Seattle and King County officials quoted the CDC in stating that as of early July, more than 12 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been administered but there had been very few blood-clotting problems and far fewer deaths. The CDC pegged it at about seven severe blood-clotting cases per 1 million women ages 18 to 49 who’d received that one-shot vaccine. Conversely, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was preventing 297 hospitalizations, 56 intensive care unit admissions and six deaths for every 1 million women in that age group that been inoculated with it.
“As with many medications, the risk of serious adverse events is small, but not zero,” said Seattle and King County officials in a statement Tuesday. “It is vital for people to have this information in order to make their own informed decisions.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been under intense scrutiny since the U.S. Food & Drug Administration put an 11-day pause on on it in April “out of an abundance of caution” as scientists studied 15 vaccine-related cases of rare and severe blood clots in women, most under age 50. Three had died by April, but the FDA and the CDC determined that the benefits outweighed the risks and advised healthcare professionals on how to detect and treat the rare clots in people who’ve received that vaccine.
That same month, Oregon officials said they were investigating whether the death of an Oregon woman in her 50s was linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Tuesday, the Oregon Health Authority couldn’t say whether any Oregonians have died from any of the COVID-19 vaccines and referred questions to the CDC. The CDC couldn’t immediately be reached to provide an answer.
The Oregon Health Authority noted more than 390 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been administered in the U.S. with overwhelming evidence of their efficacy and safety. Meanwhile, more than 700,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19, by far most of them unvaccinated.
Symptoms of the blood-clotting syndrome linked to Johnson & Johnson typically occur in the first week or two after being vaccinated and might include severe headache, abdominal pain, nausea, leg swelling or shortness of breath.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines haven’t raised the same clotting concerns as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Details beyond what was published in Wilson’s obituary remain scarce. Wilson’s family, through a spokesperson, declined to speak further with The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday, one day before Washington officials confirmed the cause of the vaccine-linked death.
An entry into the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which doesn’t list a name, appears to describe Wilson’s case. It states that a 37-year-old woman who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine on Sept. 2 went to an emergency room two days later feeling sick and experiencing back pain. It’s unclear why the vaccination date doesn’t match the Aug. 27 date announced by local health officials.
Hospital tests were run on the woman and she was sent home, according to the case description in the federal database. The next day, she returned by ambulance with hemorrhaging and bleeding, then died two days after that, on Sept. 7, according to the entry.
Wilson was born in Portland and attended Riverdale Grade School, Jesuit High School and Oregon State University. After graduating in 2007, she worked in human resource management, married Tom Wilson in 2012 and was “a superb mother” and “devoted and supportive wife,” according to her obituary. It said she had “created a beautiful, serene home for her family to thrive in.”
She is survived by her husband, two daughters, ages 3 and 5, two siblings, and her parents, Arthur and Gwen Berg. She appears to have been the granddaughter of former Portland mayor Frank Ivancie.
Wilson “had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness,” according to the obituary. But she got vaccinated because she wanted to be a “Room Mom” and involved in her children’s education.
Gov. Jay Inslee has mandated that all child-care and K-12 school employees, as well as volunteers, be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 18 as one tactic in combatting a pandemic that so far has killed more than 700,000 Americans. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown also has issued a similar mandate for K-12 schools.
“During the last weeks of her life ... the world turned dark with heavy-handed vaccine mandates,” reads Wilson’s obituary. “Local and state governments were determined to strip away her right to consult her wisdom and enjoy her freedom.”
The obituary continued: “slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. ... It cost Jessica her life.”
A statement from Seattle and King County public health officials said they and state officials “take vaccine safety very seriously,” and they will continue to monitor the evolving science.
“We send our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones,” Dr. Umair Shah, Washington’s secretary of health, said in a statement Tuesday. “Losing a loved one at any time is a tragic and difficult and pain that’s become all too familiar in the last year and a half of this pandemic.”
-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee
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