Covid-19 Vaccines Improve Heart Outcomes

Influenza and Covid-19 both appear to exacerbate the risk for bad cardiovascular events, and influenza vaccination seems to reduce that risk (see here and here). Whether Covid vaccination has similar effects is unclear.

To quantitate the cardiovascular protection offered by Covid vaccines, researchers assembled — from dozens of health plans across the U.S. — a retrospective cohort of 150,000 adults (median age, 74) who had diagnosed coronary artery disease or heart failure and were followed from December 2020 through 2022. Half had received at least one dose of Covid vaccine and half had not; the cohorts were otherwise well matched, and about 40% of each group had received influenza vaccine.