Refiling to correct spelling of Christian Eriksen’s name
There is no evidence currently that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to an increase in sportspeople collapsing or dying due to heart issues such as myocarditis.
Numerous montage videos showing sports stars collapsing or suffering chest pains during matches are circulating on social media (here, here).
One clip shared on Facebook (here) shows several incidents of football players collapsing on the pitch. It also includes news headlines about similar cases from around the world of sport, both professional and amateur.
Another post (here) includes a link to a blog (here) which strongly suggests the incidents are related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Reuters presented the posts to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the British regulator for drugs and vaccines, which said there is currently no supporting evidence to back up such claims.
MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said: “The MHRA closely monitors the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, including reports of suspected heart inflammation, myocarditis or pericarditis.
“Myocarditis or pericarditis remains a very rare potential risk with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and the events reported are typically mild with individuals usually recovering within a short time with standard treatment and rest. The current evidence does not suggest that sporting exercise is a contributing risk for these very rare events.
“The public’s safety is our top priority. Our advice remains that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks in the vast majority of people. It is vitally important that people come forward for their vaccination and for their booster doses when invited to do so.
“We ask anyone who suspects they have experienced a side effect linked with their COVID-19 vaccine to report it to the Coronavirus Yellow Card website.”
Reuters also presented the videos to FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, which said: “FIFA is not aware of a rise in episodes of cardiac arrests as indicated in your email and no cases have been flagged in relation to individuals receiving a COVID vaccine.
“Generally speaking, FIFA is in regular contact with leading research centres and experts to do research on a variety of medical topics.”
Moreover, the Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) organisation, a British charity that funds medical research and supports families of young people affected by heart conditions, told Reuters they were “not aware” of any published or peer-reviewed researched into alleged links between sudden cardiac arrests in athletes and COVID-19 vaccines. “It’s important to understand that young sudden cardiac death (in both sportspeople and the general population) is tragically not a new phenomenon,” they said.
CRY also pointed Reuters toward data published in 2008, which showed 12 ‘apparently fit and healthy’ young people (aged 35 and under) die in the United Kingdom every week from previously undiagnosed heart conditions (www.c-r-y.org.uk/statistics/ and here).
In 2018, prior to the pandemic, CRY announced the findings of a 10-year study, which concluded sudden cardiac death in elite footballers was more common than initially thought.
“Despite screening, cardiac conditions are still the leading cause of death in footballers,” Professor Sanjay Sharma, CRY’s cardiologist and a leading sports cardiologist at St George’s University of London, said at the time (here).
Speaking to The Athletic in November 2021, Sharma said an apparent rise in cardiac incidents in football specifically could be due to a “statistical cluster”, as well as greater global coverage via the internet. It could also be due to football being played more regularly and at a faster pace than ever before (here).
Sharma also acknowledged that data from the United States showed some men experienced heart inflammation after the second dose of a vaccine, but that the findings were “very early days”.
Reuters has investigated each clip shown in the two videos relevant to this fact check. There were 64 cases in total and at least 19 were related to reasons separate to COVID-19 vaccines. Within that 19, some individuals had not received a jab, while others were down to other medical conditions such as low blood pressure, heat exhaustion, historical heart issues or COVID-19 infection-induced myocarditis. Others occurred too early in the global vaccine rollout, while one was a death from six years earlier.
Some 45 cases were unverifiable for several reasons, such as some of the clips and headlines providing insufficient information to research, coroner reports not yet being completed, or clubs and sporting organisations not yet responding for comments. Nonetheless, Reuters has so far been unable to find any credible suggestions of a link between these specific cases and COVID-19 vaccines.
CARDIAC ISSUES
Professor Jeffrey Morris, the director of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania (here), told Reuters there would need to be a high burden of proof to establish a link between anecdotal reports of footballers collapsing and vaccine-induced myocarditis.
He said via email: “One would, of course, need to establish the rate of cardiac arrest is higher than what is typical pre-pandemic, and then even if there is evidence of significantly excess events right now, determine whether it is being driven by COVID-19 infections (that might be undiagnosed, especially in young people) or the vaccines.
“I haven’t seen any data or papers connecting the dots to support this type of assertion, so I’d classify it as a hypothesis driven by anecdotal reports that are definitely worth following up on, but seems way premature to begin spreading the notion that it is the truth that these are driven by vaccination.”
Prof. Morris explained that several studies do indeed suggest a link between myocarditis and the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – but said Israeli research found the risk of developing heart inflammation could be six times higher in those with COVID-19 itself.
He added: “Reports suggest that the vast majority of vaccine (and infection) induced myocarditis are mild and quickly resolve, with one paper showing that the rate of serious or long-term effects from myocarditis much higher in ‘classic’ myocarditis unrelated to COVID-19 than from infection or vaccines.”
Dr Scott Murray, clinical director of Cheshire-based heart clinic Venturi Cardiology, echoed Morris’ comments on the risk of myocarditis caused by vaccines compared with the risk posed by COVID-19.
He also said that attention to these cases was possibly due to high-profile incidents shared online, pointing to the widely publicized collapse in June of Danish footballer Christian Eriksen.
A claim about Eriksen was addressed by Reuters fact-checking team at the time (here).
VERDICT
No evidence. There is currently no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to reported incidents of athletes collapsing in public.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking workhere .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.