No evidence Covid vaccines lead to young deaths - ONS

There is no evidence that Covid vaccines have led to an increase in deaths in young people, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna jabs have been linked to very rare heart problems, particularly in young men.

The ONS looked at outcomes shortly after vaccination, when the risk of any side effect is highest.

The chance of a young person dying in that time was no different to later periods the researchers looked at.

Julie Stanborough, deputy director at the ONS said: "We have found no evidence of an increased risk of cardiac death in young people following Covid-19 vaccination."

Six months after the mass rollout of Covid vaccines, medical regulators started to report slightly higher rates of two heart conditions after receiving the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle itself, while pericarditis is inflammation of the fluid-filled sac the heart sits in.

Both side effects are very rare but appear to be more common after a second dose of either Covid jab, particularly in younger men.

Anyone with symptoms, including chest pain, a feeling of breathlessness and a pounding or fluttering heartbeat following vaccination, was told they should see a doctor.

The UK medicines regulator, the MHRA, said cases are usually mild or stable, and patients typically recover fully without medical treatment.

Catching Covid-19 itself can also lead to myocarditis, as well as other forms of severe illness.

In England, 585 young people aged between 12 and 29 died within 12 weeks of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine, official data up to 2 February 2022 reveals.

On average it is thought symptoms of myocarditis occur within two days of being given the jab.

The researchers compared the risk of dying from a cardiac event in the first six weeks following vaccination - when the possibility of a side effect is higher - with a later period from seven to twelve weeks.

They found no significant difference between both periods when broken down by age group, sex, dose or the type of vaccine received.

In 2021, the overall number of recorded deaths in young people was slightly higher than in recent years.

A total of 3,777 deaths were registered in the 15-29 age group, compared with an average of 3,598 between 2015 and 2019, before the pandemic.

In January, a group of academics and medics sceptical about the rollout of childhood Covid vaccines wrote an open letter to the UK health authorities calling for an investigation into the increase.

The ONS said its latest analysis shows the spike in recorded deaths in 2021 followed a sharp dip in 2020 and could be explained by the disruption to the operations of coroners' courts during the first lockdown.

Deaths are typically not registered until the coronial process is complete, meaning some car accidents, probable homicides or suicides were registered later than they would normally have been.

The ONS added that deaths with an underlying cause of myocarditis or pericarditis would have been counted as a "disease of the circulatory system" and there was no excess of deaths in that category for either men or women in 2021.