A Filipino living in New York City developed complications after getting the first shot of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, a news program reported today.
Luz Legaspi, 72, who has been living in the city for almost eight years, survived a severe case of immune thrombocytopenia, a lack of platelets, after getting the vaccine last month.
She told the news program Unang Balita that she really wanted to get the vaccine.
“My child looked up where I could get a vaccine. I thought getting COVID was worse,” she said in Filipino and English.
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She didn’t feel anything bad on the day she got the shot, but her situation changed the morning after.
“When I woke up in the morning after I brushed my teeth, I was gargling, and I noticed there was blood on my mouth. I thought my toothbrush injured my gums but I didn’t expect that I was really expelling blood,” she said.
“When I opened my mouth, I saw blood has formed all over my mouth. Blood also formed on my tongue. Blood just kept gushing out of my mouth. Even my nose was bloodied,” she added.
The elderly Filipina was confined for two weeks in the city’s Elmhurst Hospital, where she was attended to by healthcare workers.
“They did everything that they could. They helped each other, even doctors from other hospitals,” she said.
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Legazpi said she is on her “second life” because experts didn’t expect she would survive thrombocytopenia. She will not take the second Moderna shot but added that she had no regrets for taking the first jab.
In January, a doctor from Miami Beach named Gregory Michael died of thrombocytopenia three days after getting the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It remains unclear if the disease was caused by the vaccine.
New York City is the home of about 83,000 Filipinos, many of whom work in healthcare. Scores of them have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic started last year.
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