In discussions that take place mainly on social media, there is a concern about the increasing mortality rate in Cyprus, with some worried if this is related to vaccination during the Covid19 pandemic. At the beginning of May, the National Center of Biotechnology Information released a related research by Cypriot scientists that examines exactly this correlation
As the research abstract states, it has been argued that vaccination against COVID-19 associated with excess mortality during the pandemic COVID-19, a claim that contributes to reluctance to vaccinate. We examined whether all-cause mortality actually increased in Cyprus during the first two years of the pandemic and whether any increases were related to vaccination rates.
Method
Estimated weekly excess mortality for Cyprus between January 2020 and June 2022, overall and by age group, using both a non-linear distributed lag model (DLNM) adjusted for mean daily temperature and the EuroMOMO algorithm. The excess deaths fell to the weekly number of confirmed deaths from COVID-19 and in the weekly first-dose vaccinations, also using a DLNM to investigate the delayed response dimension.
Results
"552 excess deaths were observed in Cyprus during the study period (95% CI: 508-597) in contrast to 1306 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. No association was found between excess deaths and vaccination rates overall and for any age group except 18–49 years, among whom 1,09 excess deaths (95% CI: 0,27–1,91) per 10.000 vaccinations were estimated during the first 8 weeks after vaccination. However, detailed examination of causes of death identified only two such deaths possibly linked to vaccination, so this association is spurious and may be due to random error.'
Conclusions
"Excess mortality was moderately elevated in Cyprus during the pandemic COVID-19, mainly as a result of laboratory-confirmed deaths from COVID-19. No relationship was found between vaccination rates and all-cause mortality, demonstrating the excellent safety profile of vaccines COVID-19", research notes.