Since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, it has been vital to monitor the impact of vaccinations on mortality. As with any vaccine, this includes assessing the protection the vaccine offers against infection and severe outcomes, but also measuring the potential side effects and adverse events. The balance of risk and benefit becomes particularly important in groups where the likelihood of severe outcomes from COVID-19 is lower, as in younger people. Here, Charlotte Bermingham discusses new ONS analysis on vaccine safety in the context of young people.
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Rare adverse outcomes have been previously reported in young people, in particular diagnoses of myocarditis and myopericarditis associated with mRNA vaccines, and thrombotic events associated with non mRNA vaccines. The ONS publishes counts of deaths where a cause of death relating to adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccine has been recorded. Of the 59 such deaths registered in England and Wales up to January 2023, three were in people aged under 30. However, this number may be an undercount, because not all deaths caused by the vaccine may have been recorded as such during the death certification process. Given these reported adverse reactions and deaths related to the vaccines, in our paper and accompanying release published today, we looked at whether there was an increase in the risk of death (all cause death and cardiac related death) after vaccination.
