Posts are sharing numbers reported to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations and claiming that it proves the vaccines have killed people. This is false. Anyone can submit a report into the system and the reports do not imply causality.
An example can be seen here , with the caption saying: “9,318 DEATHS reported to VAERS after vaccine.”
In a July 21, 2021 page update, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had received 6,207 reports of people who had died after receiving a COVID vaccine between Dec. 14, 2020 and July 19, 2021 (here). But that came with clear caveats. On the same page, it says: “FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause.”
Anyone can report events to VAERS (vaers.hhs.gov/reportevent.html) and a disclaimer on the CDC’s website says: “The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable” (here). When downloading the data, users are presented with a further disclaimer that the data do not include information from investigations into reported cases. The disclaimer also says, “the inclusion of events in VAERS data does not imply causality” (here).
Reuters explored this lack of causality in other fact check articles visible here , here and here .
VERDICT
Missing context. Reports submitted to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for adverse events and deaths following the COVID-19 vaccine do not imply causation. Anyone can submit reports and the reports are not verified.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.