The COVID vaccine still protects against heart problems, a major study has found

Neglected benefits

The researchers, led by epidemiologist Ziyad Al-Aly in St. Louis VA, also looked at MACE and death in non-cases of COVID-19. Here, the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine were strong, meaning that cases of COVID-19 were either missed or underdiagnosed. Shooting appears to have reduced the MACE rate from 382 per 10,000 to 358, and the death rate from 223 to 207.

“Extending this estimate to 1 million people, vaccination can be associated with the prevention of approximately 2,370 MACE events and 1,580 deaths in 8 months,” the researchers say, although they recommend caution in interpreting the findings.

The study has limitations, including that the majority of US veterans are older, white, and male, making the findings generalizable to the general population. However, these findings suggest that the vaccine continues to provide substantial protection against COVID-19, which should inform people’s decisions about whether to receive annual treatment for COVID-19. An accompanying lesson published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday found that the vaccine still directly protects against COVID-19, reducing the risk of hospitalization and serious illness by 35 percent and 41 percent, respectively.

In accompanying editorRobert Califf, a cardiologist and former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote that the data from the two studies “provide strong evidence of the potential benefit of increasing the risk of the COVID-19 vaccine across the population.” But, he complained that despite the strong evidence, the world’s opinion is being swayed by “anti-vaccination documents from the US Department of Health and Human Services,” which is directed by the anti-vaccine Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Only 17.5 percent of adults and 22.6 percent of people over the age of 65 in the US had the 2025-2026 COVID shot, according to federal data.

“The politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine and the messenger RNA vaccine has had a significant impact on the longevity and performance of those in the US,” Califf wrote. He called on researchers to gather more information on the benefits of vaccines and to share their findings with the public, especially on social media, in order to counter the anti-vaccination movement.