Mississippi Man Partially Paralyzed After Getting Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine

A Mississippi man is now partially paralyzed after he developed a blood clot three hours after he received a shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

Brad Malagarie, a 43-year-old resident of St. Martin received the shot last week before the U.S. announced a pause of the J&J vaccine Tuesday. He returned to work following the shot. Co-workers found Malagerie unresponsive at his D’Iberville office desk three hours later.

“They called me and said he had that vaccine and something is wrong, we think it’s a stroke,” Celeste Foster O’Keefe, Malagarie’s aunt, told news outlet WLOX.

Malagarie, who has seven children, was rushed to the hospital, where doctors determined that he suffered a stroke due to a blood clot that had lodged in his left middle cerebral artery.

“He’s a young, healthy 43-year-old, and I immediately thought it, and I said be sure to tell the doctors he took that J & J vaccine and that, to me, is what caused his stroke,” his aunt said.

Malagarie had been taking medication for high blood pressure prior to the vaccination. The stroke left him paralyzed on the right side of his body. It is unclear how long it would take the 43-year-old to recover, doctors told O’Keefe.

“He can’t talk now and he can’t walk. He’s paralyzed on the right side. He knows who we are and he will just cry when he sees us,” she added. “We want him to be able to communicate, to be able to walk and talk again, even if it’s not perfect.”

Federal health officials on Tuesday announced their recommendation to put a pause on the distribution of J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine following reports of a rare blood-clotting disorder known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. or CVST.

J&J has reported nine blood-clotting cases, six of which involved women between the ages of 18 and 48.

In one case, a 45-year-old Virginia woman received the single-dose J&J's vaccine in early March. She experienced a severe headache and was rushed to the hospital on March 17, where doctors detected bleeding within her brain. She died the next day.

On Thursday, Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Kode Sammarco revealed the death of John Foley, a 21-year-old University of Cincinnati student who died after receiving the J&J shot.

The coroner is currently in contact with the Ohio Department of Health, who are investigating the student’s cause of death.