The death of a young woman in her 20s after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine could prompt a full judicial inquiry.
Coroner Catherine Fitzgerald told the parties involved that she would take a tougher approach to the submission of expert reports to the court because of the mountains of medical information coming in.
Natalie Boyce, 21, died at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne in March 2022, five weeks after receiving a Moderna vaccine booster.
During a court hearing on Wednesday, Moderna Australia lawyer Jesse Rudd said an expert they were working with needed additional medical information.
The professor had requested information about the symptoms a rheumatologist had observed when Ms Boyce was being treated for lupus in 2018.
Ms Fitzgerald granted Moderna’s request but said she would be reluctant to investigate such material further in the future. She told lawyers that “requests of this nature will be carefully scrutinised”.
“There’s a lot of paperwork,” the coroner said of the framing material submitted for the case.
Mrs Fitzgerald was reluctant to seek more information and reports ‘when we have so much material’, describing the situation as ‘chasing a rabbit down this hole’.
Natalie Boyce died in March 2022 after receiving a Moderna vaccine booster
“If this continues, it could lead to a criminal investigation,” Fitzgerald said.
Lawyers for Ms. Boyce’s family opposed Moderna’s request, arguing that the doctor had tested the young woman for lupus four years before her death.
“The importance of lupus is emphasized in all the reports,” Rudd said.
Lawyers for Mulgrave Private Hospital were also granted an application to be released as an interested party.
According to attorney Sarah Faraone, the nurses at the hospital were permanent employees, but the doctors were private contractors.
The Boyce family’s attorney, Shannon Finnegan, opposed the hospital’s request.
“My client objects to Mulgrave because the triage process was so slow,” Finnegan said.
Natalie Boyce died of myocarditis. She spent the last three weeks of her life unconscious.
Ms Fitzgerald said the hospital’s actions would be “investigated” but she dismissed the hospital as an interested party.
The court was told that Mrs Boyce’s GP had also been released as an interested party in previous months.
Mrs Boyce was educated at Deakin University. She spent the last three weeks of her life unconscious. Her death certificate lists myocardial infarction with subacute myocarditis as the cause.
When she was 15, Boyce was diagnosed with a rare blood clotting disorder that affects about one in 2,000 people.
Ms Boyce’s mother, Deborah Hamilton, previously told a parliamentary inquiry she was confident her daughter would still be alive if she had not received the Covid-19 booster vaccination.
“If we had known there were risks, I would never have given Natalie a new vaccine and I’m sure she wouldn’t have had it,” Hamilton told MPs in Canberra in 2023.
Mrs Boyce fainted, had a fever, stomach pain and was vomiting the day after she received her booster
The day after receiving the Moderna booster, Ms. Boyce fainted, had a fever, stomach pains and was vomiting. Her condition worsened as she visited doctors and several hospitals.
Ms Hamilton blames both vaccination mandates and the “medical negligence” of Victoria’s health system.
Ms Boyce was encouraged to get vaccinated by her part-time employer and needed a vaccination to attend college campuses.
The parties represented in court on Wednesday were Triple Zero Victoria, Moderna, Ms Hamilton, Monash Health, Mulgrave Private Hospital, Alfred Health and Eastern Health.
The case will return to the coroner’s court in October.
