The coronavirus vaccination programme prevented a notable amount of deaths among the elderly and people with serious health conditions such as diabetes, COPD and heart trouble, according to a new report by Dutch healthcare research institute Nivel.

As a whole, the death rate in the Netherlands in the three coronavirus years of 2020, 2021 and 2022, was around 10% higher than statistics would suggest.  The researchers set out to establish the causes, in particular in relation to political choices about lockdowns and vaccinations.

The researchers looked at almost one million anonymised patient files from family doctors and linked them to information about vaccinations, coronavirus tests and causes of death. They also took factors such as general health, ethnic background and income into account, to counteract accusations that the people who were vaccinated were in better health to start with.

The results showed people who had not been vaccinated were almost twice as likely to die from coronavirus than their peers who had opted for vaccination.

Measures such as the lockdowns, the 1.5 metre rule and the use of face masks had an impact on both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, the researchers point out.

“The impact can be seen in the fact there was no flu epidemic in 2021 and in 2022 it kicked in later,” the researchers said. “There were also fewer other infectious diseases and a reduction in traffic-related deaths.”

The mortality rate among the unvaccinated was almost three times as high as statistics would indicate, while it was lower than had been forecast for those who had been vaccinated, “suggesting that the Covid vaccine had worked and prevented deaths”, the researchers said.

In addition, the excess mortality rate for the over 80s and unvaccinated people in poor health was five times higher than among those in poor health who had been protected.

Robert Verheij, a programme leader at Nivel and professor at Tilburg University, told Trouw he hoped that the research will end the social media suspicions about a link between the vaccines and excess death rates.