Hospital turned away woman sick from shot: friend

Officials with an Edmonton hospital say they're investigating what happened when a woman who would later die sought help at the emergency department after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

A family friend of Lisa Stonehouse, Wilf Lowenberg, says she was taken off life support on Monday, 12 days after she got an Oxford-AstraZeneca shot.

Alberta chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, announced Tuesday that the death of the 52-year-old woman was due to a rare blood clot disorder — one of three such fatalities in Canada.

Lowenberg says Stonehouse had a throbbing headache and had been vomiting when she went to the emergency room at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital, but he says she was told to go home and rest.

He says her health worsened and her daughter took her the next day to the Strathcona Community Hospital in Sherwood Park, Alta., where a CT scan found a blood clot in her brain.

He says Stonehouse was being taken to another hospital in an ambulance when she had a seizure.

Covenant Health, the Catholic health-care provider that manages the Grey Nuns hospital, says in a statement that officials have assured the woman's family members that they are looking into their concerns.