Unemployed, Homeless Man Suffers Stroke After COVID-19 Vaccination, Risk Another Jab for Work

Cheung is sitting in a playground stand in Cheung Sha Wan, Hong Kong, on Jan. 3, 2023. (Zhu Li/The Epoch Times)

During the three-year pandemic, a 50-year-old laborer in Hong Kong lost his job, was evicted by his landlord, and suffered a stroke 16 days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. Being homeless, he had to risk getting a third shot to try to find a job.

Known only as Cheung, he is currently taking temporary refuge in the stands of a playground in Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon. His arm has not fully recovered from the stroke, and despite possessing a vaccine pass, he could only find some odd jobs, earning a low income from which he could hardly afford the rent of a subdivided unit.

Cheung said he had a stroke after receiving a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the Yuen Long Sports Centre in 2021. Since it did not occur within 14 days after the jab, the doctors did not recognize his stroke was related to the vaccine.

According to the vaccine pass record in the “LeaveHomeSafe” app on his mobile phone, his second vaccine dose was taken on July 1, 2021.

He recalled that at first, it was just a bit of pain in his right arm, plus a little fever. It was almost the same symptoms from the first shot, so he did not take much notice of it. However, it dragged on until one afternoon, more than two weeks later. He was at that time living in the dormitory of a charity home in Nam Cheong Estate. Suddenly he felt very tired while chatting with his companions, fell asleep at the table, and did not wake up until the volunteer workers delivered the meals later. His right arm felt numb. He thought it was because his nerves were pressed from sleeping on his side. But soon, he found that he could not even hold a spoon in his right hand, so he had to use his left hand to hold a spoon to finish the meal.

After eating, he was still tired and went to sleep. After waking up the next day, he found that he still could not lift his right arm, and the paralysis worsened, so he took himself to the emergency ward of Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung. After taking the X-rays, the doctor diagnosed that he had a minor stroke and kept him in the hospital, but the doctor would not conclude the vaccine caused the stroke.

There were more than a dozen patients in his ward admitted for strokes. It was quite crowded, and he slept on an extra makeshift bed, and the doctor prescribed aspirin and other medicines for him. After staying there for four days, the doctor released him because there were too many patients waiting, even though his condition had not improved yet.

He then went to Tuen Mun Hospital, and when the nurse took his blood for a test, she said that his blood was not easy to draw. The doctor kept him in the hospital for four or five days and prescribed a course of physical therapy and six months of disability benefits, but also did not say the vaccination caused the symptoms.

Later, Cheung said he was evicted by his landlord due to missing rent payments, and his personal belongings were thrown out on the street by the landlord. As a result, he lost his medical card.

Therefore, Cheung’s medical records could not be reviewed by The Epoch Times.

According to a document released by the drug office of the Hong Kong health department updated in February 2022, called “Lists of adverse events following immunization (AEFI) and adverse events of special interests (AESI) for COVID-19 vaccines” (pdf). It includes Table 2: “List of Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) of COVID-19 Vaccines,” and Items 28 and 44 in the table are Microangiopathy and Thromboembolism, respectively. However, it points out that the lists of AEFIs and AESIs serve as a scope of safety monitoring of the COVID-19 vaccines, they are not the lists of adverse effects of the vaccines.

His disability allowance expired in January 2022. On Mar. 4, 2022, the government adjusted the vaccine requirement to three shots, and he went to get a third shot on Mar. 13, 2022.

Although he only had a ninth-grade education, Cheung is not completely ignorant of the consequences of a stroke. His adoptive mother was admitted to the hospital due to a stroke and died in 2017. During that interim period, he had to quit his job as an airport cargo delivery man to take care of her.

He said that the stroke patients he saw before were all elderly, but now he sees more young ones. “In the ward of Princess Margaret Hospital where I stayed, there were two people who looked younger than me, but they looked sicker than me.” He added there was also a patient younger than him in the six-patient ward at Tuen Mun Hospital, where he stayed.

Despite worrying about having another stroke, he said he had to go for a third shot to have a chance of finding a job. Before the injection, he told the nurse that he had suffered a stroke after the previous injection, but the nurse told him it wasn’t necessarily caused by the vaccine and would inject his left arm instead of the right arm this time.

According to the Hong Kong government, as of Jan. 7, the percentage of the people who received first, second, and third shots are 94.6, 93.1, and 83.4 percent, respectively, out of the 7.2 million Hong Kong population. That means about one-tenth of Hong Kong did not take further injections after the first or second shots of the vaccine. This is despite the government’s “three-shot vaccine requirement,” which came into effect at the end of May 2022.

The Hong Kong government launched the COVID-19 vaccination program on Feb. 26, 2021, and implemented the “vaccine bubble“ measure requiring all people working in bars or pubs, bathhouses, party rooms, clubs or nightclubs, karaoke establishments, mahjong-tin kau premises, and cruise ships to be vaccinated by end April of the same year. This was extended to a full vaccine pass for everybody in February 2022. After ten months of strict enforcement of the vaccine pass, it was suddenly announced on Dec. 28, 2022, that it would be canceled the following day.