I Want My Wife’s Story to Be Told After Covid Vaccine Killed Her

Gareth Eve needed no reminder that his wife had died too young, but the process of clearing her wardrobe provided one anyway. ‘It was all wrong,’ he says. ‘I remembered my dad doing it when my grandad died, but then they were sorting out an old man’s suits and cardigans and walking sticks — the sort of things you should be dealing with in this situation.

‘You aren’t supposed to be faced with bright bikinis, yellow high heels, dresses that still have the labels on them and Kylie Minogue T-shirts.’

Lisa Shaw, an award-winning radio presenter on Radio Newcastle, was just 44 when she died in May 2021. Until she was admitted to hospital she had been fit, healthy and fizzing with the sort of energy her job on the morning show required.

Her devastated colleagues had to announce her death on air, but it was down to Gareth, now 43, to tell their six-year-old son Zach that his ‘mam’ wasn’t coming home. ‘I told him the morning after Lisa died. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

‘He climbed into our bed for a cuddle and I said the doctors had tried everything they could but they couldn’t make her better again. He cried, but you don’t know how much kids understand.

‘I’m not religious, but I told him Lisa was in Heaven, which was a perfect place where she’d see Grandad again, and Sally — my dad’s dog.’

Zach is now eight, still too young to have the full facts of his mother’s death explained to him, but there is no question what killed her. In August 2021, Newcastle Coroner Karen Dilks recorded that Lisa had died ‘due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination’.

‘That word AstraZeneca is on her death certificate,’ points out Gareth.

Lisa had been vaccinated on April 29, but started developing headaches a week later. On May 13, she was admitted to hospital where Gareth, reeling, was handed a print-out explaining what ‘vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia’ was.

It’s a rare condition (‘but not rare enough that they didn’t have a print-out,’ he says) leading to clots on the brain.

At first doctors were confident they could treat it, but on May 16, Lisa started to have speech problems. ‘We were having a conversation about Zach’s swimming lessons and she couldn’t get out the word “goggles”.’

It was discovered she had suffered a bleed on the brain, and was rushed to surgery where part of her skull was removed to ease the pressure. She never recovered and spent the last five days of her life on a ventilator, as her family gathered in shock.

‘I held her hand. It was all just a haze. Apart from the bandages, you wouldn’t have been able to tell there was anything wrong.

‘She looked as if she was sleeping. She looked as she always looked — perfect.’

A devastating tragedy for one family, of course. But the questions raised by Lisa’s death have much wider implications.

And so, Gareth took a step which is the equivalent of lobbing a hand grenade into the vaccine debate. He launched legal action against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, joining forces with another 75 families who have also lost loved-ones, or seen them severely disabled after having the vaccine.

Lawyers say the payouts, should the action be successful, could reach seven-figure sums.

Who will foot the bill? Not AstraZeneca. Under a legal indemnity that the Government gave the company early in the pandemic (because of the need to roll out the vaccine fast), the UK taxpayer will have to pay any compensation awarded. Gareth finds this astonishing. ‘The idea that a drug company can be immune from any legal responsibility is staggering, but even if they are, what about moral responsibility?’

At his home in County Durham, Gareth insists this action is not about money (‘because no amount will ever bring Lisa back’) but about truth and justice.

‘I have been trying to get answers from AstraZeneca, and from the Government, since Lisa died. I have contacted my MP — who didn’t really want to know.

‘I have asked questions of three prime ministers now, including Boris Johnson who was in charge at the time, and I’ve been ignored, brushed off.

‘I think I’m an embarrassment to the authorities because Lisa’s death was inconvenient for them. It challenges their narrative that the vaccine was safe, and that any risk was so rare we shouldn’t even talk about it.’

Today, he is at pains to point out that he is absolutely not an anti-vaxxer. He went on to have two more doses even after his wife died (although he had the less-contentious Pfizer jab for them, and has long advocated people being able to have an informed choice).

‘I’m not anti-vaccine. I’m anti bulls***,’ he says. ‘I just want answers. After Lisa died, I was contacted by a woman whose husband died from exactly the same thing.

‘He was treated in the same hospital, by the same doctors, and ended up in the same high-dependency unit. What are the chances of that, with a condition that is supposed to be this rare?’

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was, of course, the first Covid jab approved for use in the UK in December 2020, with the Government ordering 100 million doses for its vaccination programme.

A study by the University of Oxford, published in August 2021, estimated that for every ten million people vaccinated with AstraZeneca, there were 66 extra cases of blood clots in the veins and seven extra cases of a rare type of blood clot in the brain.

The authorities continue to stress its effectiveness, although it is worth noting that the vaccine is no longer used in the UK. In August 2022, it was announced there were no plans to order further AstraZeneca vaccines for the UK.