Do COVID vaccines cause severe heart issues?

When we saw rare cases of myocarditis after COVID vaccines, many people were confused about what it meant. Anti-vaccine activists used that confusion to wrongly claim that COVID vaccines cause many kinds of serious heart problems.

A safety signal was found after rare cases of myocarditis happened in some people after vaccination. A safety signal does not mean a vaccine is unsafe. It means experts found something that needed more study.

That safety signal has since been reviewed and resolved, meaning researchers are no longer seeing extra cases with the current vaccines. The safety system worked by finding the concern, studying it, updating guidance, and continuing to check the data.

A new large study of more than 1 million veterans found that COVID vaccination was linked to better heart health outcomes. People who were vaccinated had almost a 40% lower risk of major heart problems linked to COVID. They also had about a 24% lower risk of heart problems from any cause.

These numbers describe what researchers saw across a large group of people, not what will happen to any one person. In the study, vaccinated people had about 4 fewer major COVID-related heart problems per 10 that might have happened in a similar unvaccinated group. They also had about 1 fewer heart problem from any cause for every 4 that might have happened. The benefit was strongest for people aged 75 and older and for people with other health problems, because their starting risk was higher.

During the pandemic, COVID vaccines saved lives and also saved money. The U.S. vaccination campaign is estimated to have saved $1.15 trillion by preventing more than 3.2 million deaths and millions of hospital stays.