A man described by his family as “perfectly healthy” died after suffering “a catastrophic” brain bleed five days after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine, an inquest has heard.
The family of Roy Butler, from O’Reilly Road, Cork Road, Waterford, told Cork City Coroner’s Court that they wanted to establish “the truth about what happened” to the 23-year-old.
The inquest heard that Mr Butler, a talented footballer, complained about feeling unwell for four days after receiving the single shot Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine at a Waterford pharmacy on August 12th, 2021. He took the vaccine so he could go on an overseas holiday with friends.
He was admitted to University Hospital Waterford (UHW) on August 16th, 2021 after becoming seriously ill at home but was later rushed to Cork University Hospital (CUH), where he died the following day.
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Interventional neuroradiologist Dr Gerald Wyse told coroner Philip Comyn he examined a CT scan of Mr Butler’s brain after his admission to CUH and saw no trace of trauma to his head or skull that might account for the haematoma that developed and led to an intercranial bleed.
He said the haematoma, at more than 8cm long and 4cm deep, was very large and proved catastrophic when it leaked out, filling the intercranial spaces in Mr Butler’s brain.
“It was an unusual presentation,” Dr Wyse said. “The patient was much younger than our normal cohort for this type of bleed. It usually occurs among older patients, but it is something that does happen. I remember two patients over 20 years where we could not find the cause for such a large bleed.”
Neurosurgeon Wael Mohammed said it was decided not to operate on Mr Butler at CUH because “he had a catastrophic brain haemorrhage” and that clinical tests had shown the equivalent of brainstem death as a result of a “massive bleed”.
Ciara Davin BL, for the Butler family, said correspondence from Johnson & Johnson revealed that some 59 people had suffered intercranial bleeds in the aftermath of receiving the company’s vaccine.
John Lucey, for Johnson & Johnson, clarified to Mr Comyn that this figure was out of a total of 616 million vaccine doses distributed worldwide during the global pandemic.
Mr Butler’s mother, Angela, earlier told the inquest that her son finished his night shift at the Bausch & Lomb factory at 7am on August 16th and came home and cleaned the family car before heading to the gym at 2pm. However, she said she “knew something was wrong” when he returned home soon afterwards.
“His face was white and he told me he was going to collapse in the gym and his heart was banging out of his chest,” she said, adding that Roy headed upstairs to rest and she went up, closed the blinds and gave him a biscuit at around 3.30pm.
Ms Butler said her son later sent a text saying to come up to his room, which she did and saw he had been sick.
“I called him but I got no response,” said Ms Butler, who added that she then called to her husband Martin to come upstairs. “Roy was a perfectly healthy young boy prior to getting the vaccine.”
Martin Butler said Roy was still getting sick even though his eyes were closed and was suffering “convulsions and jerks” so they immediately called the emergency services. He was rushed by ambulance to UHW before being transferred to CUH.
The family received a call during the journey to Cork from a neurosurgeon, who said Roy only a 2 per cent chance of survival. Twenty minutes later, while still driving, they received a call to say this had fallen to 1 per cent.
“The following day, August 17th, the surgeon told us they did everything and nothing was working,” Martin Butler said. “We had a discussion about Roy taking the vaccine four days earlier and we asked him to make sure the truth was told.”
Martin Butler said he spoke to his son Aaron and made the decision to switch off the life support machine. “We went down to say our goodbyes, the machine was switched off and five minutes later Roy passed,” he said.
The inquest continues.
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