The mother of a 21-year-old woman who died after receiving the Moderna Covid vaccination was painfully reminded of the situation a year after the tragedy.
Natalie Boyce, 21, died at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne in March 2022, five weeks after receiving a Moderna Covid vaccine booster. The case is now before the Melbourne coroner’s court.
Her death certificate listed the cause as a heart attack with subacute myocarditis.
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, is a fierce opponent of mandatory vaccinations. She says her daughter was forced into them by a part-time employer and Deakin University in Melbourne, which made it a condition of being on campus.
“I hold those who promote vaccines responsible for the death of my healthy daughter,” Hamilton told a parliamentary inquiry in 2023.
“That same GP practice sent me an insensitive text message on February 24 of this year, almost a year after her passing, asking me to pick up my booster on February 24,” Hamilton said.
‘Money is clearly more important to them than human lives. This text caused me severe emotional distress.’
In her 20-minute testimony, which Ms. Hamilton later said was attended by only six senators, the grieving mother told a harrowing story of her family’s suffering.
Ms Hamilton said Ms Boyce, who she described as a hard-working student pursuing a double degree in law and commerce, fainted the day after receiving a Moderna jab, following her two Pfizer jabs, at a pharmacy.
Natalie Boyce, 21, died at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital in March 2022, five weeks after receiving a Moderna Covid vaccine booster
“I called the COVID vaccine line for help but they were completely useless,” Hamilton said.
“Their response was that I should call an ambulance if I thought I needed one.”
Mrs Boyce developed fever, abdominal pain and vomiting, which her GP surgery and later a local hospital misdiagnosed as reflux.
When Ms Boyce’s condition did not improve, Ms Hamilton decided to take her to Monash Hospital in Melbourne, in what she called ‘the biggest mistake of her life’.
“This major public hospital in Victoria was an absolute shambles,” she said.
Despite having been vaccinated against Covid three times, Mrs Hamilton was not allowed to accompany her daughter to the wards due to the pandemic rules in place at the time.
“I still have text messages from her on my phone begging me to come and see her because everyone was allowed to have someone with them,” Ms Hamilton told parliament.
During her final weeks in Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital, Natalie’s heart and kidneys failed
“This still haunts me, and it probably will for the rest of my life.”
According to Ms Hamilton, Monash Hospital left Natalie “sitting in a chair for eight hours with a drip in her arm and a full vomiting bag”.
“She was humiliated and, it turned out, had severe heart failure, yet she was ignored by the staff,” Hamilton said.
‘They also misdiagnosed her and sent her home after about 16 hours.
“Doctors noted that they were seeing a lot of these reactions after COVID vaccinations, particularly a messy liver on an ultrasound.
‘Yet they still did nothing for her. They didn’t examine her heart, despite all the signs, and sent her home with a report saying she looked fine and that she should see a doctor in a week.’
Mrs Hamilton said 36 hours later Natalie was in extreme pain and had difficulty breathing, so she called 911 three times.
“I can’t believe the way I was treated by the ESTA operator,” Ms Hamilton told parliament.
‘I told her that my daughter has antiphospholipid syndrome, a blood clotting disorder, and that I thought she had blood clots in her lungs.
‘Because Natalie was still conscious, the operator dismissed me and refused to mark the call as a code 1 and send an ambulance immediately.’
The operator told the increasingly distraught Mrs. Hamilton that a paramedic would call her within half an hour to assess whether an ambulance should be sent.
“I then decided to drive her to Mulgrave Private Hospital,” Hamilton said.
Deborah Hamilton presented the harrowing story of Natalie’s death to Parliament last year
She said that while Natalie was “intermittently conscious” upon arrival, they still had to follow protocols and wait 15 minutes for a negative COVID test before she could be seen by a medical person.
After a doctor ‘immediately diagnosed’ Natalie with severe 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 top ambulance service in Victoria did not have the equipment necessary to transport her”.
After chasing the ambulance, Mrs Hamilton arrived at The Alfred Hospital at around 2.30am but was told she could not stay with Natalie and had to go home due to Covid regulations.
“I was so upset because again, the fact that I was vaccinated meant nothing to me,” Hamilton said.
“I was a mess and had to drive about 40 minutes home. To this day I don’t know how I got home in the state I was in.”
Natalie spent three weeks unconscious in the intensive care unit at the Alfred Hospital, her heart and kidneys failing and her foot blackened by a blood clot.
She died during an MRI scan on March 27, 2022.
Australia’s medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, later added Natalie to its list of deaths linked to the vaccines. It is one of just 14 deaths in Australia attributed to the jabs, and the only death attributed to Moderna.
During the first two weeks in intensive care, Mrs. Hamilton was only allowed to visit Natalie for an hour three days a week. After that, she was allowed to visit for an hour every day.
Ms Hamilton said she was furious when she heard the rules were completely different for then-Victoria Premier Danial Andrews.
Ms Hamilton said she was furious when she heard the rules were completely different for then-Victoria Premier Danial Andrews, who was in the same hospital recovering from a fall down the stairs.
“A nurse from Alfred told me that Daniel Andrews could have visitors whenever he wanted, with no time limit,” Hamilton said.
‘My daughter was seriously ill and I couldn’t be there for her, but the Premier of Victoria was always allowed to receive visitors, as long as he wanted.’
She said the communication from all the hospitals involved in the ordeal was terrible.
“During my hour-long visits, I was told she had been resuscitated multiple times, but no medical professional had bothered to call me and tell me,” Hamilton said.
‘Another time I came home and heard that Natalie was on dialysis, but again no one from Alfred Hospital had called about that.
It was shocking and disturbing to see more machines attached to my daughter upon arrival.’
She said that since her daughter’s story came out, she has been contacted by many other people claiming she has been harmed by vaccinations.
Ms Hamilton called for Moderna to be taken off the market ‘‘so that no one else dies from it’.
“Natalie’s death has devastated my life and has had a huge impact on the lives of her brother Hayden and the rest of my family,” Hamilton said.
“We were a close, loving unit, but now that has been broken.”
The investigation into her death could lead to a full criminal investigation.
During a court hearing on Wednesday, coroner Catherine Fitzgerald told the parties involved that she would tighten the reins on the submission of expert reports to the court, as mountains of medical information were coming in.
Jesse Rudd, a lawyer for Moderna Australia, 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’.
“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 case will return to the coroner’s court in October.