A Ponoka doctor who says he identified 56 patients adversely impacted by COVID-19 vaccine testified at the National Citizen’s Inquiry into COVID-19 policies held in Red Deer on Wednesday.
But family doctor Greg Chan said he only received feedback on 23 cases that he filed with provincial officials, and only six were accepted as adverse effects.
One of his patients was a mother of three children who had a stillbirth eight weeks after receiving a second dose of the vaccine while pregnant in 2021.
He said there was a push for pregnant women to be vaccinated, but no usable data from Canada about the risk to a pregnant woman or baby from COVID. Data from the Centre of Disease Control in the United States showed 0.11 per cent of moms dying from COVID.
Prior to the pandemic, he said pregnant women were protected from new medications.
“We still have a very short history with (COVID vaccine) and I would be very concerned about providing these to pregnant women,” testified Chan.
“We don’t know what the effects are from these injections. We don’t know if it’s going to be mild like a rash, or if the person’s going to have chest pain or myocarditis or a stroke. We just don’t know.”
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Chan had complaints about the process used to file adverse vaccine reactions. Health officials notified him that the criteria he was using were wrong, while he had little confidence that reactions were being appropriately documented.
“The only way to know is to gather all the information and see what adverse events actually fit chronologically with taking these injections and then seeing which ones are more common.”
He said another one of his patients was a hockey player who fell unconscious 24 to 48 hours after getting the COVID-19 vaccine injection. Despite being a high-performance athlete, he went on to experience chest pain and shortness of breath and stopped playing hockey.
Chan was also the family doctor of the 14-year-old terminal cancer patient whom former medical officer of health Deena Hinshaw misidentified as the first young Albertan to die from COVID.
He said the boy was receiving hospice care in the hospital. He tested positive for COVID-19 after being in the hospital, but his death was due to complications from brain cancer.
“I did not write COVID on the death certificate. I did not even mention COVID as part of the most responsible diagnosis on the discharge summary. I followed the advice of the medical examiner’s office to leave COVID out of the diagnosis.”
He said it’s curious that the boy’s death was reported to be from COVID-19 during a surge of the COVID Delta variant and Albertans were urged to get vaccinated.
“This is just before they were going to release (vaccine) for under 12-year-olds, so this type of information being released at that particular time is very suspicious,” Chan said.
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Inquiry hearings are being held at Baymont by Wyndham, from April 26 to 28, and are broadcast live at nationalcitizensinquiry.ca.
Eleven other people are scheduled to testify in Red Deer to challenge the province’s pandemic response including former police and military members, and people currently working in the fields of health, law, and research.
Spruce Grove pastor James Coates with GraceLife Church was among them. Coates served time in the Edmonton Remand Centre for failing to comply with a bail condition not to hold church services that officials said were ignoring COVID-19 measures.
Some unscheduled participants will also testify. On Wednesday, Joelle Valliere, a funeral director from Drayton Valley, testified that she had adverse reactions and serious medical side effects related to the vaccine.
Premier Danielle Smith, NDP leader Rachel Notley, and Hinshaw were issued summons to testify at the Red Deer hearings. Summons also went out to other government ministers and former premier Jason Kenney. None were scheduled to appear.
According to the NCI website, the social impacts, business bankruptcies, delayed healthcare and avoidable deaths due to lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates have been profound. The fracturing of families and communities, and the erosion of fundamental Charter rights, merits a thorough and comprehensive investigation.
Launched by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning last November, Manning is no longer the spokesperson for the citizen-led inquiry.
In January, Premier Danielle Smith made Manning the chair of a panel that will review the Alberta government’s COVID-19 response.
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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