Girl, 15, died on day she was due to get Covid jab after getting virus and dying just hours later due to ‘extremely rare’ complication, inquest hears
- Jorja Halliday, 15, died hours after being admitted to hospital with coronavirus
- She deteriorated ‘astonishingly’ quickly due to a heart issue caused by the virus
- An inquest heard Jorja suffered myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle
- Myocarditis caused by Covid is ‘extremely rare’, said doctors who treated Jorja
A 15-year-old girl died on the day she was due to get her Covid-19 vaccine after getting the virus and deteriorating ‘astonishingly’ quickly because of an ‘extremely rare’ heart issue caused by the virus, an inquest heard today.
To the horror of medics, Jorja Halliday died just hours after being admitted to hospital due to Covid myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle.
The aspiring musician – a ‘healthy’ girl – had complained of aches while she had Covid-19 but was otherwise ‘comfortable’ at home initially.
Then, on September 28 last year, the day she was due to get her jab, her worried mother Tracey took the schoolgirl to her GP as her symptoms worsened and she was taken to hospital immediately.
At the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, Hampshire, her decline was so rapid and devastating that her doctor said ‘I’m not sure it was a situation anyone could have survived’.
Jorja Halliday died just hours after being admitted to hospital due to a heart issue caused by coronavirus
The 15-year-old died on the day she was due to get her Covid-19 vaccine after getting the virus and deteriorating ‘astonishingly’ quickly because of an ‘extremely rare’ complication, an inquest heard today
Jorja had complained of aches while she had Covid-19 but was otherwise ‘comfortable’ at home initially
An inquest heard Jorja suffered ‘severe’ myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle – brought on by Covid-19.
Covid myocarditis in children is ‘extremely rare’ and Jorja’s situation was so unique, doctors who treated Jorja said she is the ‘only child they have seen it occur in before’.
Dr Nick Tarmey said the situation was so harrowing Jorja’s team of doctors were ‘horrified’ as they battled to save her but couldn’t.
Speaking after Jorja’s inquest today at Portsmouth Coroner’s Court, Mrs Halliday, 41, said she will constantly question whether her daughter would still be alive if she had the jab sooner.
The inquest was told Jorja revised in her bedroom on the evening of September 23 but fell ill overnight.
Mrs Halliday said: ‘At 3.40am I had a text from her saying ‘mum’… She said she ached all over and could not get to sleep.’
She carried out a lateral flow test as well as a PCR test and suffered aches and pains.
‘She said she felt generally crap. She was able to eat some things and drink but was really achey’, her mother said.
She was prescribed antibiotics by her GP, as she displayed signs of tonsilitis, and eventually started vomiting as she couldn’t keep food or water down and her throat was sore.
On the morning of September 28, Jorja had had a ‘restless’ night and Mrs Halliday was concerned by the vomiting so they went to her GP surgery.
Alarmingly, her resting heart rate was recorded as 144bpm and Mrs Halliday rushed her to the QA Hospital on advice of the doctor at 2pm.
But by 7pm Jorja was dead.
At the hospital’s Children’s Assessment Unit, medics devised a plan to put her into a coma after she was admitted so they could transfer her to specialists in Southampton however her heart rate then plummeted.
Dr Nick Tarmey, Consultant in Critical Care and Anaesthesia, said: ‘She looked very pale. She had a look of fearfulness that she could not meet the demands of her body.’
Covid myocarditis in children is ‘extremely rare’ and Jorja’s situation was so unique, doctors who treated Jorja said she is the ‘only child they have seen it occur in before’ (Pictured: Jorja with her siblings Daisie and Oscar)
Dr Tarmey said that before her heart rate plunged it was 145bpm, she had a ‘critically’ low blood pressure, and her blood lactate was rising to ‘really concerning’ levels.
‘She looked frightened, not just of the situation but had a sense that something was seriously wrong with her body’, Dr Tarmey said.
‘Her body was really struggling to cope, she was deteriorating quickly.
‘She was looking confused and agitated. [Confusion] happens because your body can’t get a good enough blood supply to the brain, so we knew she was close to collapsing.
‘We were convinced it was heart failure, her heart could not pump enough blood to her body due to Covid. It was not going to be long before she went into cardiac arrest.
‘This was a tough situation because there’s not really many things you can do to stop that happening at that point.’
Dr Tarmey told the hearing he was ‘horrified’ by the situation.
On the morning of September 28, Jorja had had a ‘restless’ night and Mrs Halliday was concerned by the vomiting so they went to her GP surgery (Pictured: Jorja with her siblings Daisie and Kallum)
‘Everything we were trying would buy us only a few minutes. We could not reverse the situation, we could not stop the decline of her heart.
‘We were making all these interventions to help Jorja but she kept getting worse.
‘We all felt horrified by what happened to Jorja.’
Dr Tarmey said severe myocarditis brought on by Covid-19 is ‘extremely rare’.
He said: ‘I’ve not treated any other children with Covid as a cause of myocarditis, that’s in keeping with how rare it is, I’m sure if you look at the percentage of children who have had it it is extremely rare.
‘There are not many illnesses [like myocarditis] that cause a deterioration like that, it is horrible.
‘I’m not sure it was a situation anyone could have survived.’
Jorja’s tearful mother told the hearing: ‘From the time we got there until she passed away she deteriorated so quickly.
Dr Nick Tarmey, Consultant in Critical Care and Anaesthesia, said: ‘She looked very pale. She had a look of fearfulness that she could not meet the demands of her body’ (Pictured: Jorja with her siblings Daisie, Kallum, Julie and Oscar)
‘All the staff did everything they could to help Jorja, falling short of getting a heart bypass nothing could have been done.’
She asked: ‘If she had the Covid jab earlier, would it have affected her differently? Would the outcome be different?’
Dr Tarmey said: ‘I really don’t know. We know that the jab reduces the risk of severe complications, so I suppose having a jab might reduce the risk of these complications but I am extrapolating that from the benefits we know.’
Coroner Sarah Whitby gave a conclusion of natural causes, with the cause of death being acute myocarditis associated with Covid-19.
Ms Whitby said: ‘What was astonishing was that the deterioration was so rapid.
‘Despite the swift actions taken by her mother and the appropriate medical treatment, she deteriorated rapidly and died later that day due to Covid-19.’
Jorja’s tearful mother told the hearing: ‘From the time we got there until she passed away she deteriorated so quickly’ (Pictured: Jorja with her sister Daisie)
Speaking after the inquest, Mrs Halliday, from Portsmouth, said she will always wonder whether having a jab sooner would have changed things.
She said: ‘It’s always going to be a question in my mind. If she had it sooner, would the outcome be different?
‘It’s a question nobody can answer, there is a lot of what ifs.’
Mrs Halliday, who has a tattoo of her daughter’s hospital heart trace over her own heart, said she hopes ‘it gets the message out there that Covid can do this to young people.’
Mrs Halliday, who wore a mask at the hearing, added: ‘Jorja was loved by many people, she still gets talked about.
‘Every birthday that [one of her four brothers and sisters] have, we write notes for Jorja.’
Source: Read Full Article
