Covid-19 vaccines did not kill 30 people at one clinic in New Zealand

Several Facebook posts claim that in New Zealand “in one clinic, in one day 30 people were covid injected and all 30 have died.” The posts cite sources claiming that these deaths were “linked to the jabs”.

This is false. It is contradicted by the latest official data from New Zealand, which shows a total of four deaths in which the Covid vaccine was the confirmed or suspected cause, up to the end of November 2022.

People’s health can be seriously harmed if they make decisions based on bad information about medicines and other treatments. We have written about Covid and other vaccine misinformation many times before.

What the post says

The posts share a link to an Exposé article, which says “New Zealand is a Crime Scene: In one clinic, in one day 30 people were covid injected and all 30 have died”. (We have fact checked claims from the Exposé many times before.)

The article cites a video from the New Zealand activist and political candidate Liz Gunn, in which she makes the allegations.

In the video, Ms Gunn says she has seen data from a whistleblower showing “that there are tens of thousands of deaths linked to the jabs”.

She goes on to say: “On one day, 30 people were jabbed on the same day at the same location. All are now deceased. And their deaths are in close temporal, time, proximity to each other… Statistically the numbers of deaths we saw cannot be attributed to natural causes.”

She does not publish this data, however. Nor did she respond to questions about it when asked by the Australian fact checker AAP.

Full Fact approached Ms Gunn through her party New Zealand Loyal, and has also not received a response at the time of writing.

We also approached the Exposé for comment.

What we know

As we have said before, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) says: “For a medicine to be considered safe, the expected benefits of the medicine will be greater than the risk of suffering harmful reactions.” And in the case of the Covid vaccines, the MHRA says: “the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks in the majority of people”.

The equivalent authority in New Zealand, Medsafe, agrees, saying: “The protective benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 far outweigh the potential risks of vaccination.”

It is true that a very small number of people have died as a result of receiving a Covid vaccine.

At the time of writing, the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that 56 people in England and Wales died due to “COVID-19 vaccines causing adverse effects in therapeutic use” up to the end of July 2023, with a further eight deaths “involving” the vaccines, but where they were not the underlying cause. These figures may rise in future.

According to Medsafe data, in New Zealand, up to the end of November 2022, two people are confirmed to have died from receiving a Covid vaccine, with one other death considered “likely due to vaccine induced myocarditis”, and a further death where “a link to the vaccine could not be excluded”.

Chris James, group manager for Medsafe, told fact checkers at AAP that “There is no evidence to support this claim […] No reported deaths to Medsafe match the claim as reported.”

More than 11 million doses of the Covid vaccine had been administered in New Zealand, and more than 150 million in England and Wales. The UK Health Security Agency estimates that more than 120,000 deaths were prevented by the Covid vaccines in England up to the end of September 2021.

Deaths reported following vaccination are often not caused by it. As a New Zealand government information release mentioned by Ms Gunn says: “While an [adverse event] can occur after vaccination, that does not mean it was caused by vaccination.”

Image courtesy of CDC