An expert committee has assessed the 45 death cases with COVID-19 vaccination within 14 days before they passed away and concluded that 26 death cases had no causal relationship with vaccination.

The Expert Committee on Clinical Events Assessment Following COVID-19 Immunisation assessed serious adverse events relating to COVID-19 vaccination during its meeting today.

As of September 30, about 8.68 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered to the public.

The Department of Health received 6,108 reports of adverse events, 45 of which were death cases involving people who had received vaccines within 14 days before they died, taking up 0.0005% of the total vaccine doses administered.

So far, the expert committee concluded that 26 death cases had no causal relationship with vaccination, and preliminarily considered that 19 cases were not associated with vaccination.

The committee considered that there is no unusual pattern identified so far, and will continue to closely monitor the situation and collect data for assessment.

According to information from the Hospital Authority, during the period from August 30 to September 26, the ratio of death cases out of those without a vaccination record was 106.6 cases for every 100,000 people, whereas the ratio of death cases for those with a vaccination record was 4.3 cases for every 100,000 people. The overall death rate is similar to that recorded in the past three years.

Based on these figures, there is no evidence that vaccination increases the risk of death for recipients.

Results of the causality assessment of the serious or unexpected adverse events following COVID-19 immunisation will be included in the updated safety monitoring report to be published on the Government’s designated website on October 8.