A day after India rolled out the world’s largest vaccination drive to inoculate three million people against coronavirus, on Sunday, a 46-year-old government hospital employee died in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad, 24 hours after receiving COVID-19 vaccine jab.

However, the district’s Chief Medical Officer said the death of the employee is not related to the vaccine shot. 

Mahipal Singh, who was working as a ward boy, was unwell before receiving the shot and he died on Sunday after complaining of chest congestion and breathlessness.

The authorities say Singh suffered from cardiac arrest, while his family is blaming the death on vaccination. 

“My father had a cough but after the vaccination he was suffering from fever and laboured breathing. On Sunday, he was admitted to the government hospital where he died at night,” Vishal said.

Moradabad’s chief medical officer, MC Garg on Sunday told reporters that Singh was vaccinated on Saturday noon. Citing the post mortem report, Garg said the cause of death was a cardiac disease.

Also read | 29 elderly people die in Norway after first dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine

“It does not seem to be a reaction to vaccination. He did night duty on Saturday too and there were no problems,” Garg said.

The post mortem reveals that the immediate cause of Singh’s death is “cardiogenic shock/septicemic shock” due to “cardio-pulmonary disease”, according to the Uttar Pradesh government, quoted NDTV. 

This comes after the Union Health Ministry on Sunday said that around 447 adverse events following immunisation were reported, of which three were hospitalised. The most adverse events reported included fever, headache, and nausea, the Health Ministry said. 

A 35-year-old Kolkata nurse was hospitalised after receiving the jab of the COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday. The nurse is currently stable and a medical board of experts has been formed to find out why she fainted after taking the shot.

An AIIMS security guard was also hospitalised, as he developed an allergic reaction after receiving the vaccine shot on Saturday. He had developed the allergic reaction as part of “severe” adverse events following immunisation.