A post is being widely shared on social media claiming that there were 318 cardiac arrests and 178 deaths among athletes vaccinated for COVID-19. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: 318 cardiac arrests and 178 deaths among athletes were vaccinated for COVID-19.
Fact: Currently, there is no evidence to show that 318 cardiac arrests and 178 deaths among athletes happened only after they were vaccinated for COVID-19. Recently, multiple incidents of athletes collapsing or dying because of heart issues like myocarditis has been linked to COVID-19 vaccines. Reuters debuked a similar claim that there is currently no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to reported incidents of athletes collapsing in public. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We could not find any credible reports which confirm that there were 318 cardiac arrests and 178 deaths among professional athletes because they were vaccinated for COVID-19.
Google search led us to an article which says, ‘318 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 178 Dead, After COVID Shot’. The article gives a list of athletes who died in 2021, with links to news stories. But the article has no case studies, no links to scientific or medical research, no scientific resources, or any peer-reviewed studies linking these deaths to COVID-19 vaccines and it also does not provide any evidence of these athletes having taken the vaccine. It gives a list of athletes who died in 2021 and a claim or implication that they are COVID-19 vaccination-related. Though there are reports of severe side effects because of vaccines in rare cases, there is no information to link them to COVID-19 or vaccine as their cause of death was undetermined.
There is a website named ‘goodsciencing’ which is apparently updating the figures for 2022 with a graph, linking the deaths and cardiac arrests of young adults to COVID-19 vaccination. The ‘About’ page of the website does not reveal who runs the website, calls themselves as ‘a small team of investigators, news editors, journalists, and truth seekers, now backed up by others, who are discovering pieces of information that we can investigate.’ At the end of the page, they thank a website and Stew Peters, who had spread conspiracy theories earlier about COVID-19.
Recently, multiple incidents of athletes collapsing or dying because of heart issues like myocarditis has been linked to COVID-19 vaccines. Reuters had recently debunked this claim that there is currently no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to reported incidents of athletes collapsing in public.
To sum it up, currently, there is no evidence to show that 318 cardiac arrests and 178 deaths among athletes happened only after they were vaccinated for COVID-19.
