Police autopsy: Heart attack, not vaccine, killed De Oro senior citizen

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—A police autopsy on a 73-year-old man, who died on Wednesday minutes after getting a shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine for coronavirus, showed that his death was caused by a heart attack.

Lt. Col. Christian Karl Terrence Caballes, forensics officer of the Northern MIndanao police, said Zoilo Joaquin Borcillo, 73, did not die because of the AstraZeneca vaccine as earlier rumored.

“We did not find blood clots anywhere in his body or near where the point of the vaccine entered his left arm,” Caballes, who did the autopsy, said in his report.

Borcillo, a resident of Agusan village, complained of difficulty in breathing minutes after he was injected with the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine at a shopping mall here.

He was given CPR and rushed to JR Borja General Hospital but died minutes later despite efforts by doctors to revive him.

Caballes, whose report was read by Mayor Oscar S. Moreno during City Hall’s daily press briefing here, said he found Borcillo’s heart and the arteries leading to it filled with fatty deposits.

He said the color of Borcillo’s heart was yellow indicating there was a buildup of fatty deposits.

He added that Borcillo’s heart already had difficulty pumping blood.

“There was no blood clot,” Caballes said.

Caballes put the cause of death as acute myocardial infarction or heart attack.

AstraZeneca, a two-dose vaccine, has been plagued with questions of rare, but severe blood clot issues connected to the shots.

The Department of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, however, gave the green light to the vaccine saying that the “benefits outweighs the risks.”

TSB