COVID shot raises heart-related death risk in young women, report reveals

AstraZeneca‘s COVID vaccine  raised the risk of heart problems, and death by 3.5 times in young women in the first three months following the first dose, according to a report.

The report by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics is based on the impact of COVID infection and vaccination risk on cardiac and all-cause mortality in young people, aged 12 to 29 years, in England.

The report included data starting December 8, 2020, when the vaccines were first rolled out in Britain. The mortality data came from two independent sources: deaths registered by June 8, 2022, and hospital deaths by March 31, 2022.

However, the U.K. had, in April 2021, stopped AstraZeneca’s vaccination for young people following safety concerns, and most of the young people who received it would have been prioritized due to clinical vulnerability or being healthcare workers.

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According to the statistical model, 11 out of the 15 cardiac deaths in young women that occurred within 12 weeks of a first dose of a non-mRNA vaccine were likely to be linked to the vaccine.

  “It’s enough to catch my interest and say we should study this more,” Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was quoted as saying by The New York Times. But “I wouldn’t come close to drawing any causal conclusions.”

The World Health Organization’s newest guidance on COVID-19 vaccinations only recommends regular boosters for older adults and suggests that demand for shots could be weaker in coming years than vaccine makers have anticipated.

The WHO’s vaccines advisors said Tuesday they don’t recommend annual COVID-19 vaccine boosters for healthy adults under ages 50 to 60 after they have received their first vaccine and booster, and they no longer recommend vaccinating healthy children or teens against the virus.

The guidance takes into account the diminished threat from COVID-19, and the need to commit resources to vaccinating for other diseases, the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, or SAGE, said Tuesday.

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WHO officials also voiced skepticism over the advantages offered by the bivalent vaccines, which Moderna and Pfizer have rolled out in response to FDA requests.

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At a Tuesday news conference, the organization said there was “minimal evidence” showing that bivalent vaccines are more effective than monovalent vaccines, which specifically target COVID’s original strain.

As the world continues to move toward a post-pandemic life — and as the World Health Organization (WHO) recently predicted that COVID-19 will end in 2023 as a public health emergency — Americans may have reached a state of “vaccine fatigue,” data suggests.

The number of vaccine injury reports that poured in after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines caught officials off guard, newly disclosed documents show.

Since early in the pandemic, physicians have flagged diabetes as a risk factor for worse outcomes with COVID infection, but the relationship may also work the other way: evidence is building that COVID could also be a risk factor for developing diabetes, both type 1 and type 2.

While the science isn’t yet settled, and the exact mechanism that could drive such a relationship isn’t clear, experts say there appears to be a signal that’s worth continued investigation.