💉📊 Comparing Risk: COVID Deaths vs. Vaccine-Proximal Deaths Within 28 Days
Throughout the pandemic, the most prominently reported COVID-19 fatality metric was “deaths within 28 days of a positive test.” This definition, used by Health NZ and echoed weekly in media briefings, served as a rapid-response mortality indicator — but did not always reflect the underlying cause of death.
In contrast, there was no routine public reporting of how many people died shortly after receiving a vaccine dose — even though Health NZ’s internal datasets do track this. The data has now been released under the Official Information Act (OIA), allowing a direct, mechanical comparison.
📈 The Data
Using literal counts from Ministry of Health sources:
- COVID-19 deaths are defined here as people who died within 28 days of a positive COVID test.
- Vaccine-proximal deaths include any cause of death within 29 days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine dose, by dose number and age.
| Dose # | 0–20 | 21–40 | 41–60 | 61–80 | 81–99 | 100+ | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 21 | 39 | 98 | 304 | 664 | 14 | 1,140 |
| 2 | 13 | 36 | 128 | 370 | 688 | 14 | 1,249 |
| 3 | 1 | 20 | 73 | 390 | 748 | 19 | 1,251 |
| 4 | 0 | 7 | 53 | 255 | 544 | 19 | 878 |
| 5 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 158 | 361 | 15 | 555 |
| 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 89 | 163 | 9 | 267 |
| 7 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 37 | 52 | 4 | 96 |
| 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
Here’s how the two compare by age group:
| Age Group | 💀 Died Within 28 Days of COVID Test | ⚰️ Died Within 29 Days of COVID Vaccine Dose |
|---|---|---|
| 0–20 | 18 | 35 |
| 21–40 | 44 | 103 |
| 41–60 | 211 | 381 |
| 61–80 | 1,305 | 1,606 |
| 81–99 | 1,752 | 3,221 |
| 100+ | 1,328 | 94 |
🔍 What the Data Shows
- Across every age band except 100+, more people died within 29 days of a vaccine dose than died within 28 days of a positive COVID test.
- The gap is particularly large in the 81–99 cohort.
- The 100+ group is the only exception, likely due to lower vaccination rates, shorter post-vaccine survival windows, or limited rollout to this group at early stages.
⚠️ Important Caveats
- This data does not imply causation — it shows only temporal proximity.
- The COVID deaths are based on test positivity, not clinical coding of COVID as a cause.
- The vaccine death proximity data includes all causes, and uses a minimum estimate (with all masked
<6values counted as 1).
