Multiple people across the globe who stepped forward early to receive the Covid vaccine are speaking about what they say is the debilitating neurological condition they developed after getting the shot.

Officials became concerned about potential side effects, even shutting down Oxford-AstraZeneca's phase three Covid vaccine trials while investigators researched possible links to the shot.

Later, health authorities concluded the disabling condition, transverse myelitis (TM), was coincidental and trials were resumed. However, similar cases emerged in recipients of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines after rollout, raising ongoing concerns about possible connections.

Daily Mail can now reveal that thousands of cases of the same neurological condition were reported after all major brands of Covid vaccines were administered.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr Joel Wallskog, author and Oxford University lecturer Sally Bayley and business owner Rebecca Thommen all received a Covid vaccine - either the AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna shots - and were diagnosed with TM soon after.

TM is primarily an autoimmune condition that causes inflammation of the spinal cord that can lead to sudden weakness, numbness in the limbs, permanent or temporary paralysis, and bladder and bowel issues.

Death is rare but can be caused by complications that affect breathing, or infections resulting from being less mobile.

In the US, about 1,500 people are diagnosed with TM annually. In the UK, that number is between 200 and 300.

By August 2025, the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) had received 5,531 reports of post-vaccine TM, including 3,741 reports following the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 1,073 after the Moderna vaccine.

By October 15, according to a freedom of information request, the UK's drugs' watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which collects vaccine data through its Yellow Card scheme, had recorded 179 cases of TM, including two fatalities, following the AstraZeneca vaccine, and small numbers post Pfizer and Moderna.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was not authorized for use in the US but was authorized in 170 countries, including the UK.

Father of four Dr Joel Wallskog, 55, was an orthopedic surgeon with Aurora Healthcare in Milwaukee. 

He developed TM age 50 after receiving one dose of Moderna's mRNA Covid vaccine in December 2020. As a physician, working up to 80 hours a week, he was one of the first to be vaccinated.

A water sports enthusiast, Dr Wallskog lived a healthy lifestyle but became paralyzed within days of vaccination and was eventually diagnosed with post-vaccine transverse myelitis.

Dr Wallskog told Daily Mail: 'My symptoms started seven days later. I'd heard that AstraZeneca had halted their trials in the UK, US, Brazil and South Africa, after volunteers developed TM in the British trial, and put two and two together. 

'I asked my neurologist if it could be associated. His response was, 'I don't know Joel, I don't want to get involved.'

'My symptoms started with numbness and tingling in my legs. I fell over at work when I was with a patient. I immediately had an MRI scan and was diagnosed with transverse myelitis within days.'

Dr Wallskog was treated with steroids and IVIg, intravenous immunoglobulin, which is used to treat autoimmune diseases. He took two weeks off work to recover, but when he returned in January 2021, he 'was stumbling and falling again.'

He told Daily Mail: 'I realized I was in deep trouble. I was scared but also in denial. It was the first time in my life that I was faced with a chronic disability.'

As a doctor, he immediately suspected the vaccine was to blame, but like his neurologist, many doctors refused to discuss it. Then on June 30, 2025, Dr Daniel Nordin, from Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee, wrote in a medical assessment that Dr Wallskog was suffering from a: 'severe/significant reaction to Moderna Covid vaccine.'

Dr Wallskog is partially paralyzed and no longer able to work.

He told Daily Mail: 'I still suffer from a partial spinal cord injury that results in weakness in my legs, numbness in my feet, poor balance and a propensity to fall.

'I can stand for around two to four hours a day, but when I have neuropathic [burning] pain flares, my weakness worsens and usually results in me being bedridden for one to two days a week.

'When this happens, I need a wheelchair, walker or cane depending on the severity of the weakness.'

He tried to get help but there was nowhere to go, he said.

He told this website: 'I felt abandoned, I felt like someone should be saying 'how can we help you?' I have a wife and four kids; there are a lot of people depending on me.'

He added: 'I filled out a VAERS report in January 2021. I thought I'd get an immediate call. Days and weeks passed and I heard nothing. I contacted the CDC. They told me: 'transverse myelitis is a diagnosis of special interest to us, can we talk to you?'

And when did he speak with someone from the CDC, in February 2021, he told Daily Mail: 'I spoke with a CDC physician for 15 minutes and that was the last time I ever heard from them. My story is not unique. No one calls. We are the vaccine industry's dirty little secret.'

VAERS acts as an early warning system and does not conduct clinical investigations. Instead, it analyzes epidemiological data to detect significant statistical increases in adverse events post-vaccination. Small increases may go unrecognized by the system.

Almost 70 percent of VAERS reports are completed by medical professionals or vaccine manufacturers, with the remainder coming from members of the public.

Healthcare providers and manufacturers have legal obligations to report certain adverse events. It is illegal to knowingly submit a false VAERS report with the intent to mislead.

A VAERS report does not confirm causation. Proof of vaccine related injury needs clinical evaluation by physicians.

Strong steroids keep his condition in check but have the side effect of diabetes. As well as numbness and weakness in his legs, he also suffers from chronic nausea, fluctuating heart rate and blood pressure, and insomnia and says his condition is deteriorating.

Moderna did not respond to requests for comment, but Daily Mail has seen medical records that confirm his diagnosis and injury.

Sally Bayley, 53, who lived alone during the pandemic lockdown, is the author of eight books and has lectured in English literature at the University of Oxford in Oxford in the UK.

She told Daily Mail the city was 'buzzing' with excitement as Oxford University partnered with AstraZeneca to develop the company's adenoviral vector-vaccine in record time.

Bayley received two AstraZeneca vaccines, the first in May and the second in July 2021.

She said: 'Everybody in Oxford was rallying for the AstraZeneca vaccine. We thought we'd created the solution to Covid. I was teaching alarmed American students who were very scared of Covid, so I got the vaccine.

'After the first one I felt a tightening around my ribs and mid spine, like wearing a girdle. After three weeks I was finding it difficult to walk the distances I normally walked – five to six miles a day.

'I was extraordinarily exhausted after a mile and would have to sit down and rest. I also developed heart palpitations. I rang my GP [general practitioner] and told them what was happening, and they put it down to anxiety. I knew it wasn't.

'The second vaccine was catastrophic, and it was obvious something very bad had happened.'

She told this website that within 48 hours she became dizzy and developed sensitivity to sound and tinnitus.

Bayley continued: 'I couldn't hold my head up, I couldn't move my right eye because the muscle was frozen. I had strong pain in the lumbar and thoracic [lower and middle back] regions in my spine. I couldn't lift my legs; this was in the next 48-hours.'

She became housebound and said she was 'unable to get seen [by a doctor] anywhere.'

Finally, in August 2021, Bayley got an appointment with her regular doctor, telling Daily Mail: 'He couldn't find a pulse because my blood pressure was so low, and I couldn't hold my arms over my head.

Bayley told Daily Mail the doctor said: 'We've had a lot of people coming in with these symptoms.'

In September 2021, she began an exhausting round of hospital appointments with neurologists. MRI scans ruled out multiple sclerosis and it was suggested she had functional neurological disorder (FND), a brain disorder causing physical symptoms.

The third consultant she saw, at the Royal London Hospital in east London, diagnosed 'probable post-vaccine transverse myelitis.' He said: 'I'd been gaslit by a system not wanting to admit vaccine harm.'

In 2022, Bayley wrote to Sarah Gilbert, the lead scientist behind AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Gilbert received a Damehood in 2021 for her part in its development, an honor in the UK, bestowed on people who make significant contributions to the arts, science, and public life.

And Bayley personally knew Professor Adrian Hill, the director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford where the vaccine was developed.

Bayley told Daily Mail: 'I told Sarah Gilbert that part of my body no longer worked, and she wrote back and advised me to fill out a Yellow Card report.'

Neither Hill nor Gilbert responded to requests for comment.

In March 2024, AstraZeneca notified the European Commission (EC), the legal authority granting permission for new drugs in Europe, that it intended to withdraw the marketing authorization for Vaxzevria, its Covid vaccine. It cited 'commercial reasons' caused by a 'decline in demand.'

By January 2022, when the UK withdrew it for use, around 2.5 billion doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had been administered in more than 170 countries.

Trial data AZ submitted to the EC, showed that three unidentified volunteers who developed TM had received the vaccine. None in the placebo group developed the condition.

It also showed more adverse events in the vaccinated volunteers than those who received the meningitis vaccine as the placebo, but without a saline placebo it is impossible to make an accurate adverse event comparison.

Death is also a serious adverse event associated with the meningitis vaccine.

There were 62 deaths recorded in the vaccine group of 21,587 volunteers and 32 in the placebo group of 10,793 volunteers. Volunteers dropped out of both groups and were unavailable to follow up — 3,431 in the vaccinated group and 1,831 in the placebo group.

Diabetes and several cancers were also recorded among people in both groups, including skin, colon and pancreatic.

The vaccine became known as the 'clot shot' on social media for causing vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), a serious condition affecting around 1 in 50,000 people.

It involves an abnormal immune response that causes blood clots to form in the brain, liver, intestines, or lungs, while also reducing platelet levels, cells that help blood clot.

In VITT, platelets are activated by the immune system and get used up forming clots, which is why levels drop dangerously low. VITT was not recorded in the trial data — which did report low platelets and deep vein thrombosis — as the 60,000-participant trial was too small to detect such a rare event.

A group legal action, brought under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, was launched in the UK by British lawyer Sarah Moore, a partner in the firm Leigh Day.

There are 51 claimants, 12 of whom are acting on behalf of loved ones who died following the complication allegedly caused by AstraZeneca's vaccine.

In February 2024, in court papers, the company disputed the claims but admitted that their vaccine caused VITT 'in very rare cases.'

Mother of one Rebecca Thommen, 50, from Braunton, Devon, in the UK, ran a popular clothing store, worked as a singer and musician and enjoyed horseback riding and swimming.

Thommen was 46 when she received one dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine in May 2021. She was diagnosed with transverse myelitis 18 days later.

According to the National Institutes for Health (NIH) National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) TM may be acute, developing in minutes and days, or subacute, developing in one to four weeks.

As well as partial paralysis, she also developed bowel and bladder problems, insomnia, migraines and pericarditis—inflammation of the sac protecting the heart.

A neurologist initially diagnosed FND but in May 2023, Liverpool University Hospital, which researched vaccine injuries, diagnosed her with 'probable post-vaccination transverse myelitis,' according to documents reviewed by the Daily Mail.

Thommen told Daily Mail: 'Symptoms began with an ache in my injection arm two weeks after the vaccine. Both legs went numb and began to spasm and I lost feeling from the waist down. 

'Dad took me to the hospital at 1 am where I had a lumbar puncture, but the hospital lost the results. I developed bowel and bladder problems and had a colostomy bag for a couple of days. I spent eight days in hospital.

'On discharge I went to stay with my parents for four months to recover and adjust. I was scared that if I went to sleep, I wouldn't wake up.'

Thommen initially had to use a wheelchair and then walking sticks but is now able to walk on her own.

She added: 'Life is still a struggle; I can't walk properly and can't feel my feet properly and have only regained 80 percent of bowel and bladder function.

'I'd had alopecia areata – patchy hair loss – but my hair was growing back. After the shock and drugs, it all fell out again and I now have alopecia universalis – complete body hair loss. It has drastically changed my life and my family's life.'

Thommen's husband, Lee Thommen, 52, had to take six-months compassionate leave to care for the couple's daughter Nyah who was three at the time.

When he went back to work, however, they said they had no job for him, and he was laid off.

He now works as a laborer on a building site.

Rebecca Thommen told Daily Mail: 'He didn't want the vaccine and struggled with guilt that he didn't try harder to stop me, but I wanted to maintain contact with my parents and protect them.

'Lee became obsessed with trying to heal me and became very tearful. I was just trying to get through the day, and he wanted to fix everything, which caused me quite a lot of stress.

'We had to spend some time apart and he went to live with his father in Scotland for a few weeks.'

Pfizer said in a statement: 'Patient safety is paramount, and we take any reports of adverse events very seriously. Adverse event reports do not imply causality, and in the context of vaccination such events may be unrelated to administration of the vaccine.

As with every medicine and vaccine, including the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, Pfizer has robust processes to meet its regulatory responsibilities to closely monitor, report and analyze all adverse events, and collect relevant information to assess any new potential safety risks that may be associated with the Covid-19 vaccine.

Patients who received the Covid-19 vaccine should talk to their doctor, pharmacist or nurse if they have any concerns or experience any side effects. This includes any possible side effects not listed in the package leaflet. Side effects can be reported directly via the Yellow Card Scheme or to VAERS.

And AstraZeneca said: 'The decision to resume the trial was made by an independent Research Ethics Committee, appointed by the NHS Health Research Authority (HRA), and the MHRA, after they investigated the cases.'

The HRA told the Daily Mail that independent committees, made up of experts and laypeople, are typically appointed by the drug company sponsoring the trial.

It added that all trials must have a Data Monitoring Safety Committee (DMSC) attached which review reported adverse events.

Following reports of transverse myelitis, the DMSC found there was insufficient evidence to rule out a link to AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine but recommended the trial should continue.

This recommendation was agreed by a sub-committee of the UK's Berkshire REC.

The HRA also told the Daily Mail that transverse myelitis was added to information given to AstraZeneca's trial participants.

It was also added to AstraZeneca's public information leaflet. Moderna and Pfizer did not include transverse myelitis as an adverse event in their public information leaflets.