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UK Health Officials Covered Up Reports of Heart Damage Linked to AstraZeneca Vaccine

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 29, 2026

Newly released U.K. public health data show that in 2021 and 2022, thousands of people filed cardiac-related adverse event reports after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

The data confirm the findings of a study by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) researchers. The study was published on Preprints.org.

GB News last week reported on the data, obtained from the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The data showed that in 2021 alone, the MHRA received 48,472 reports of cardiac-related adverse events linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Of these, 23,914 cardiovascular events had already been reported by late March 2021 — which means the reports were filed within the first three months after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out to the public.

A total of 6,175 reports of blood-clotting events were reported during the same period, according to MHRA data.

The adverse event reports were being filed even as U.K. public health authorities told the public that the AstraZeneca vaccine — a non-mRNA vaccine developed in conjunction with Oxford University and licensed under the name Vaxzevria — was safe and effective.

Oxford researchers, Drs. Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan obtained the data through a freedom of information request submitted to the MHRA in October 2025. The request sought information on cardiovascular and thromboembolic (blood-clotting) events connected to the AstraZeneca shot between February 2021 and January 2024.

MHRA responded to the request a month later, providing the researchers with data, which Jefferson and Heneghan analyzed and published in a series of Substack posts.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time anyone (outside the powerful) has seen the reports submitted to the MHRA regarding serious potential harms during the first period of the rollout,” the researchers wrote in a Substack post.

CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said the MHRA “used non-public data from one of the best medical record systems in the world” to craft “a narrative opposite to what the data reflect.”

“Instead of showing the cardiovascular catastrophe that unfolded in those injected with the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, health officials instead wrote that the results of their analysis offer ‘reassurance regarding the cardiovascular safety of COVID-19 vaccines.’ … The word ‘fraud’ may actually be too kind,” Jablonowski said.

Informed consent ‘compromised’

The MHRA contained discrepancies. According to GB News, MHRA dismissed its own figures after the researchers published them on Substack. Instead, they said the number of heart conditions linked to the AstraZeneca shot during the period in question was 13,010 — nearly four times lower than the original figure.

An MHRA spokesperson told GB News that the agency is “currently reviewing previously released figures in more detail to identify any potential discrepancies.”

In its analysis of the MHRA data, TrialSite News suggested that such significant data discrepancies call the MHRA’s credibility into question.

“While adverse-event reporting systems are designed to detect signals rather than prove causation, large unexplained gaps weaken confidence in risk communication,” TrialSite News wrote.

The researchers also asked the MHRA to provide data on the number of AstraZeneca shots administered in the U.K. The UK Health Security Agency initially refused, explaining that the information was “commercially sensitive” and that releasing it “would not be in the public interest.”

The agency later released the data after the researchers appealed. According to the researchers, the data showed a strong correlation between doses administered and adverse events reported. However, even after the AstraZeneca vaccine was withdrawn, adverse event reports were still being filed, suggesting “a long-term dose effect.”

TrialSite News founder and CEO Daniel O’Connor told The Defender that “the MHRA disclosures highlight a core failure of pandemic-era regulation: safety signals were managed rather than transparently communicated.”

“The issue is not only the adverse events themselves, but why their full scale emerged only through freedom of information requests,” O’Connor said. “When critical risk information reaches the public years late, informed consent is compromised and trust in the regulatory system is inevitably eroded.”

CHD study found evidence linking AstraZeneca shot to heart conditions

The data in the MHRA documents support the findings of a preprint study published by CHD and Brownstone Institute scientists last year.

The researchers reanalyzed data used in earlier studies that concluded the COVID-19 vaccines were safe. By comparing relative risks from different vaccines — which the original studies failed to do — the new research revealed evidence linking the Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to significant health dangers.

The study also found that the risks for cardiovascular disease and death from the AstraZeneca vaccine were significantly higher than those of the Pfizer vaccine.

The preprint, which is undergoing review, also suggested that some earlier COVID-19 vaccine safety studies were “biased by design.”

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD chief scientific officer, drew parallels with similar findings that he and Jablonowski discovered about safety signals connected to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and a subsequent cover-up of those signals by U.S. public health agencies.

Hooker said:

“The Pfizer vaccine was released on Dec. 11, 2020, and by January 2021, there were 23 reports of military service personnel with diagnoses of myocarditis following receiving the shot. At this point, less than 5% of U.S. adults had received the jab.

“The evidence regarding the Pfizer shot and myocarditis very quickly unfolded in front of these agencies, but no warning was given until May 27, 2021, when the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] trotted out a website that indicated there might be an issue with myocarditis and pericarditis due to VAERS reports. At that point, over 50% of those eligible in the U.S. had received the jab.

“The point was clear: lie and hide until we can get lots of shots in arms.”

UK continued to recommend AstraZeneca shot despite safety signals

According to GB News, at the same time that the MHRA data were showing evidence of cardiac conditions and blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, “internal discussions were taking place” about how to manage public messaging about the shot’s safety.

GB News cited minutes from a U.K. government task force on COVID-19 vaccine risks. The minutes, published in 2024, showed that concerns about the link between the AstraZeneca shot and blood clots were discussed as early as April 2021, and that safety issues were known by March 2021.

Throughout 2021, stories about people who died of blood clots after getting the AstraZeneca shot began appearing in the media.

Yet, the task force minutes recorded discussions of “concerns that public alarm over the vaccine could make it harder to vaccinate the population by increasing ‘vaccine hesitancy,’” GB News reported.

During this period, the mainstream press in the U.K. continued to promote the AstraZeneca shot as safe and effective. A March 2021 report by The Guardian claimed, “There’s no proof the Oxford vaccine causes blood clots.”

In April 2021, the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advised that adults under 30 should be offered an alternative COVID-19 vaccine. The European Medicines Agency issued similar guidance that month.

Yet, by March 2021, several European countries had withdrawn the AstraZeneca shot, citing the risk of blood clots. Research published that month also found a link between the shot and blood clots.

The AstraZeneca shot was never authorized or licensed in the U.S., but clinical trials for the vaccine were conducted in the U.S. with American participants. TrialSite News cited the case of Brianne Dressen, “who developed severe, long-term neurological symptoms after participating in the U.S. trial.”

AstraZeneca contractually agreed to provide medical care to trial participants for research-related injuries. However, in an ongoing federal lawsuit, Dressen alleges that the company reneged on that promise. AstraZeneca argued it is immune from legal prosecution.

In 2021, Dressen founded React19, an advocacy group for the vaccine-injured.

“These events underscore that even vaccines halted before approval can produce lasting human consequences — and unresolved accountability questions,” TrialSite News wrote.

‘A move to quiet the public, to pacify would-be critics’

AstraZeneca withdrew its COVID-19 vaccine from the market in 2024, citing “commercial reasons.” However, the company admitted in 2024 U.K. court documents that its shot could, in “very rare cases,” cause blood clots.

“This admission is now central to a growing class action lawsuit brought by individuals who say they suffered life-changing injuries,” GB News reported.

“The timing of events is interesting. AstraZeneca requested the withdrawal of the vaccine from EU markets in March 2024. It was effective May 2024. The study decrying its ‘cardiovascular safety’ was published in July 2024,” Jablonowski said.

According to Jablonowski, this suggests that these actions were “not for the betterment of public health nor vaccine uptake, since the vaccine was no longer available,” but were instead “a move to quiet the public, to pacify would-be critics.”

GB News reported that a U.K. parliamentary inquiry into the MHRA’s handling of vaccine safety issues is “very likely” to occur.

“These agencies, both in the U.S. and the U.K., need to be held to account for their felonious lies and those individuals who were harmed need to be compensated,” Hooker said.

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This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 30, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Deception, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK