The mother of a 21-year-old woman who died after receiving the Moderna Covid vaccination received a excruciating reminder a year on from the tragedy.
Natalie Boyce, 21, died in March 2022 at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, five weeks after receiving a Moderna Covid vaccine booster and the case is now before the Coroner’s Court in Melbourne.
Her death certificate lists myocardial infarction with subacute myocarditis as the cause.
Australia’s medical watchdog the Therapeutic Goods Administration later listed Ms Boyce as a fatality linked to the vaccines, one of only 14 Australian deaths linked to the jabs and the sole one linked to Moderna.
Deborah Hamilton, Ms Boyce’s mother, has become a fierce opponent of jab mandates saying her daughter was pushed into it by a part-time employer and Melbourne’s Deakin University that made it a condition of being on campus.
‘I hold those pushing vaccines accountable for the death of my healthy daughter,’ Ms Hamilton told a parliamentary inquiry in 2023.
‘This same GP practice on 24 February this year, nearly a year to the day of her death, insensitively sent me a text to get my booster on 24 February,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘Money is obviously more important to them than people’s lives. This text caused me severe emotional stress.’
When she was 15, Ms Boyce was diagnosed with an uncommon blood clotting disorder that affects about one-in-2000 people.
Ms Hamilton said she didn’t realise was a potential risk to her daughter from the vaccine.
‘I have also since discovered that there were warnings, in November 2021, of the dangers of the vaccine for people with immune compromised conditions,’ Ms Hamilton told the Senate.
‘If I had known this very real risk, Natalie would never have had another vaccine, and I believe she would still be alive today.’
In her 20-minute testimony, which Ms Hamilton later said only six Senators bothered attending, the grieving mother narrated a harrowing tale of her family’s suffering.
Ms Hamilton said Ms Boyce, who she described as a hard-working student studying a double degree in a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce, fainted the day after receiving a Moderna shot, following her two Pfizer ones, at a chemist.
Natalie Boyce, 21, died in March 2022 at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne , five weeks after receiving a Moderna Covid vaccine booster
‘I called the COVID vaccine line for help, yet they were totally useless,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘Their response was for me to call an ambulance if I thought I needed one.’
Ms Boyce began suffering a fever, stomach pain and vomiting’, which the GP clinic and later a local hospital misdiagnosed as reflux.
With Ms Boyce not improving Ms Hamilton decided to take her to Melbourne’s Monash hospital, which she called ‘the biggest mistake of my life’.
‘This major Victorian public hospital was an absolute shambles,’ she said.
Despite being triple Covid vaccinated Ms Hamilton was not allowed to accompany her daughter into the wards under the pandemic rules then in place.
‘I still have text messages in my phone from her, pleading for me to come and be with her as everyone else was allowed someone with them,’ Ms Hamilton told parliament.
During her last weeks of life in Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital Natalie’s heart and kidneys failed
‘This still haunts me today, and probably will for the rest of my life.’
Ms Hamilton claims Monash hospital left Ms Boyce ‘sitting in a chair for eight hours with a drip in her arm and a full vomit bag’.
‘She was humiliated and, as it turns out, in serious heart failure, yet she was ignored by staff,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘They, too, misdiagnosed her and sent her home after about 16 hours.
‘Doctors remarked that they were seeing a lot of these reactions after COVID vaccinations, especially a messy looking liver on an ultrasound.
‘Yet still they did nothing for her. They failed to investigate her heart, despite all the signs, and sent her home with a report saying she looked well and to follow up with a GP in a week. ‘
Ms Hamilton said that 36 hours later Ms Boyce was in extreme pain and was having trouble breathing so she rang triple 0.
‘I can’t believe how I was treated by the ESTA call operator,’ Ms Hamilton told parliament.
‘I told her that my daughter has antiphospholipid syndrome, which is a blood clotting condition, and that I thought she had blood clots on her lungs.
‘Because Natalie was still conscious, the operator dismissed me and refused to mark the call as a code 1 and to send an ambulance immediately.’
The operator told an increasingly frantic Ms Hamilton a paramedic would call her within half and hour to assess whether an ambulance should then be dispatched.
‘I then made the decision to drive her to Mulgrave Private Hospital,’Ms Hamilton said.
Deborah Hamilton laid out the harrowing story of Natalie’s demise before parliament last year
She said on arrival with Ms Boyce ‘going in and out of consciousness’ they still had to follow protocols and wait 15 minutes for a negative COVID test before she could be seen by any medical person.
After a doctor ‘diagnosed straightaway’ that Ms Boyce was in serious heart failure it was decided she needed to go to the Alfred Hospital for intensive care.
Ms Hamilton said she was ‘disgusted’ to learn ‘that the highest ambulance service in Victoria did not have the necessary equipment to transport her’.
After chasing the ambulance Ms Hamilton arrived at the Alfred around 2:30 am but was told she couldn’t stay with Ms Boyce and to go home because of Covid rules.
‘I was so distressed because, again, me being vaccinated meant nothing,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘I was a mess and had to drive home for about 40 minutes. To this day, I do not know how I got home in the state I was in.’
Ms Boyce spent three weeks in the ICU at the Alfred Hospital unconscious while her heart and kidneys were failed and her foot went black from a blood clot.
She died while having an MRI on 27 March 2022.
During the first fortnight in the ICU Ms Hamilton was only allowed to visit Ms Boyce for an hour on only three days a week but then she was allowed to visit for an hour each day.
Ms Hamilton said she was incensed to learn the rules were entirely different for then Victorian premier Danial Andrews
Ms Hamilton said she was incensed to learn the rules were entirely different for then Victorian premier Danial Andrews, who was in the same hospital recovering from a stair fall.
‘An Alfred nurse told me that Daniel Andrews was allowed visitors whenever he wanted, with no time limits,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘My daughter was critically ill, and I was prevented from being there for her, yet the Victorian Premier could always have visitors as long as he liked.’
She said communication was appalling from all hospitals involved in the ordeal.
‘I was told during my one-hour visits that she had been resuscitated on several occasions, yet not one medical professional had bothered to call and let me know,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘Another time, I arrived to find out that they had put Natalie on dialysis, yet nobody from the Alfred had rung to tell me about this either.
It was distressing and shocking to arrive and see more machines attached to my daughter.’
She said since her daughter’s story became publicised she has been contacted by many other people claiming vaccine injuries.
Ms Hamilton called for Moderna to be pulled from market ‘immediately so no other person should die from it’.
‘Natalie’s death has destroyed my life and severely impacted her brother, Hayden, and the rest of my family’s life,’ Ms Hamilton said.
‘We were a tight, loving unit that is now shattered.’
An investigation into her death could progress to a full coronial inquest.
At a mention hearing in court on Wednesday, Coroner Catherine Fitzgerald told the involved parties that she would tighten the reins on expert reports being filed to the court, as mountains of medical information piled up.
Moderna Australia lawyer Jesse Rudd said an expert they had been working with required further medical information.
The professor had requested information about symptoms observed by a rheumatologist who saw Ms Boyce for her lupus in 2018.
Ms Fitzgerald allowed Moderna’s request but said she would be reluctant to chase further such material going forward, telling lawyers ‘these sorts of requests will be scrutinised’.
‘There’s lots of paper,’ the coroner said of the mounting material filed for the case.
Ms Fitzgerald was hesitant to obtain more information and reports ‘when we already have so many materials’, describing the situation as ‘chasing the rabbit down this hole’.
‘If this continues on the current trajectory, this could lead to an inquest,’ Ms Fitzgerald said.
Lawyers for Ms Boyce’s family opposed Moderna’s request on the grounds the doctor saw the young woman for lupus four years before she died.
The matter will be back before the Coroner’s Court for another mention hearing in October.
