Doctor’s Death 2 Weeks After Vaccine Under Investigation: Report
MIAMI BEACH, FL — The death of a 56-year-old Miami Beach doctor two weeks after he received the coronavirus vaccination is under investigation, the Miami Herald reported.
The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office is working with the Florida Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the death of Dr. Gregory Michael, an obstetrician with an office at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, reports said.
“He was a very healthy 56-year-old, loved by everyone in the community, delivered hundreds of healthy babies and worked tireless through the pandemic,” his wife, Heidi Neckelmann, shared to her Facebook page Tuesday. She also described her husband as “a pro vaccine advocate.”
Michael, whom she called “the love of my life,” received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine coronavirus vaccine at Mount Sinai on Dec. 18 and died Jan. 3 “due to a strong reaction to the COVID vaccine,” she said.
Three days after receiving the vaccine, he went to the emergency room after seeing “a strong set of petechiae (spots) on his feet and hands,” she said.
The love of my life, my husband Gregory Michael MDan Obstetrician that had his office in Mount Sinai Medical Center in...
Posted by Heidi Neckelmann on Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Bloodwork done showed his platelet count dropped to zero, Neckelmann said. A normal platelet count ranges from 150,000 to 450,000 per microliter of blood, she added.
Michael was admitted to ICU with immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), a blood disorder, but doctors were unable to increase his platelet count, she said. “He was conscious and energetic through the whole process, but (two) days before last-resort surgery, he got a hemorrhagic stroke caused by the lack of platelets that took his life in a matter of minutes.”
Pfizer, the manufacturer of the vaccine Michael received, is investigating his death but doesn’t “believe at this time that there is any direct connection to the vaccine,” reports said. The company said he died from a “highly unusual clinical case of severe thrombocytopenia, a condition that decreases the body’s ability to clot blood and stop internal bleeding.”
The Medical Examiner’s Office hasn’t ruled out a connection with the vaccine, though. The case is still under investigation, reports said.
A GoFundMe fundraising campaign has been established for Michael’s family. As of Sunday morning, more than $30,000 has been raised.
This article originally appeared on the Miami Patch
