COVID vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths since pandemic: study

US News

By Emily Crane

COVID vaccines could be partly to blame for a rise in “unprecedented” excess deaths in the US and other Western countries in the three years since the pandemic took hold, a new study suggests.

Analyzing mortality data from 47 Western countries, scientists from The Netherlands’ Vrije Universiteit found that excess mortality has “remained high” since 2020 — even despite the widespread rollout of COVID vaccines and various containment measures.

The researchers said the trend “raised serious concerns” as they urged government leaders and policymakers to “thoroughly investigate the underlying causes of persistent excess mortality,” according to the study published in BMJ Public Health.

“Although COVID-19 vaccines were provided to guard civilians from suffering morbidity and mortality by the COVID-19 virus, suspected adverse events have been documented as well,” the researchers wrote.

“Both medical professionals and citizens have reported serious injuries and deaths following vaccination to various official databases in the Western World.”

“During the pandemic, it was emphasized by politicians and the media on a daily basis that every Covid-19 death mattered and every life deserved protection through containment measures and Covid-19 vaccines. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the same moral should apply,” they added.

The study found there had been more than three million excess deaths across the US, Europe and Australia since 2020.

Of those excess deaths, more than one million occurred in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, according to the study.

Those figures, however, remained high in the following years with 1.2 million in 2021 and 800,000 in 2022, researchers added.

The death toll figures include fatalities directly linked to the virus, as well as “indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection,” the study notes.

The researchers added that although the vaccines were “provided to guard civilians from suffering morbidity and mortality by the COVID-19 virus”, serious side effects had also been documented — including ischaemic strokes, acute coronary syndromes and brain haemorrhages.

“This commonality hinders clinical suspicion and consequently its detection as adverse vaccine reactions,” the study stated.

More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID since the pandemic broke out, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.