“Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against Covid-19 do not increase the risk of long-term mortality,” summarized Thursday in a press release Epi-Phare, a French organization bringing together the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) and Health Insurance, whose researchers published this study in the journal Jama Network Open.
They examined data on nearly 30 million French people between 2021 and 2025, i.e. the entire 18-59 age group. A majority – almost 23 million – received a vaccine from mid-2021, when a massive vaccination campaign against the disease caused a major pandemic in the early 2020s was launched. The rest – almost six million – have not been vaccinated, despite restrictive measures encouraging vaccination.
Most of these vaccines were those with messenger RNA, either from Moderna or from Pfizer/BioNTech which quickly became the spearhead of anti-Covid vaccination in France.
Within the vaccinated group, 0.4% of people died within four years of receiving the first vaccine. Among the unvaccinated, the figure stands at 0.6%, which means that general mortality is a quarter higher.
“We can say with a high degree of confidence that there is no increase in the risk of mortality after a Covid vaccine,” concludes researcher Mahmoud Zureik who supervised this study to AFP.
Rare serious side effects
The effectiveness and safety of anti-Covid vaccines have already been documented by numerous studies. The main serious, rare side effects are cardiovascular problems – myocarditis, pericarditis, etc. – which do not call into question the benefit of vaccination in most age groups. The Moderna vaccine has, however, not been recommended in France for young adults.
But vaccine skeptic circles have frequently relayed the false idea that vaccines, in particular messenger RNA, had quietly killed many people, without this clearly appearing in the official data, which focuses on mortality directly linked to Covid with a decline of only a few months after vaccination.
