COVID-19 may cause life-threatening heart issues. Studies show that people with COVID-19 are 55% more likely than those without the virus to have a severe cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, stroke, or death.

They are also more vulnerable to other cardiac disorders such as arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms) and myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle).

Several studies have shown that COVID infection increases the risk of serious complications and vaccines help.

Even though there have always been people who don’t like vaccines, this new worry is bringing in people who aren’t usually into conspiracy theories.

Does the COVID vaccine affect the heart?

On January 2, during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, American NFL player Damar Hamlin’s heart stopped after what seemed to be a routine tackle in the first quarter. The sight of him lying motionless at midfield was a shock to the world. Fortunately, medical workers were quick to perform CPR and use an automatic external defibrillator, which was credited with saving his life.

Social media was abuzz with speculation within hours, suggesting that the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills star might have fallen victim to the Covid jabs, with rumors circulating that his heart was dangerously weakened by the vaccination.

Many people including British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra are asking an obvious question, which is “whether he had received the mRNA jab”, as myocarditis (heart inflammation) is a well-known side-effect covid jabs that increase the risk of sudden cardiac death, particularly in contact sports where “blunt impact to the chest” is high.

Do they have any proof?

In the new study, scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, after analyzing the most extensive datasets in the United States, found that individuals who were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, and received a COVID-19 vaccine, experienced fewer heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular issues.

The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology today.

It is the first research in the United States to investigate both complete and partial immunization and the connection to major adverse cardiac events (MACE), validating prior findings using the Korean COVID-19 registry.

The researchers used the National COVID Cohort Collaboration (N3C) database, the most extensive national resource on COVID-19.

Since its beginning in 2020, the N3C has regularly gathered and standardized data from institutions’ electronic health records.

In this study, there were a total of 1,934,294 patients, and 217,843 of them got an mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson.

Cox proportional hazards, a statistical approach, was used to evaluate the connection between immunization and MACE.

“We sought to clarify the impact of previous vaccination on cardiovascular events among people who develop COVID-19 and found that, particularly among those with comorbidities, such as previous MACE, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, liver disease, and obesity, there is an association with a lower risk of complications,” remarks senior author Girish N. Nadkarni.

“While we cannot attribute causality, it is supportive evidence that vaccination may have beneficial effects on a variety of post-COVID-19 complications.”

Concerns have been raised within the sport as to whether or not such events can be prevented, and there have been growing requests for safety measures in recent years.

“To our surprise, even partial vaccination was associated with lower risk of adverse cardiovascular events,” points out first study author Joy Jiang. “Given the magnitude of SARS-CoV-2 infection worldwide, we hope our findings could help improve vaccination rates, especially in individuals with coexisting conditions.”

It is a fact that some individuals who got the Moderna or Pfizer mRNA vaccines later had heart problems.

Studies show that most cases were mild and that people got better quickly.

So, there is some risk, but it is very small. Generally, Moderna has roughly 14 complaints per million doses, Pfizer has 10 complaints per million, and AstraZeneca has five complaints per million. For pericarditis, Moderna reports eight cases per million doses, Pfizer six cases per million, and AstraZeneca five cases per million.

But it’s also worth remembering that Covid has a risk of myocarditis that is much higher than the vaccine (1,500 cases per million infections).

For this reason, doctors believe that the advantages of vaccination significantly exceed the risks.

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