WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Breast cancer rates have increased 1000 per cent in COVID-vaccinated Americans.
OUR VERDICT
False. The claim compares cases for under-45s with cases for all Americans.
AAP FACTCHECK - Health data does not show US breast cancer rates have surged by more than 1000 per cent among those who received the COVID-19 vaccine, despite a post circulating online.
The author of the claim has selectively compared different breast cancer statistics to provide a false comparison.
The claim appears in a Facebook post with an image sharing a headline from Slay News, a website debunked previously by AAP FactCheck.
"Breast Cancer Surges 1000% Among Covid-Vaxxed Americans," the headline in the post reads.
"From 2019 to 2021, there were approximately 26,000 recorded cases of breast cancer per year," the article states.
"In 2023, a shocking 297,000 breast cancer cases were recorded, marking a staggering 1042.3% spike in just five years."
However, the figures relate to different measures of breast cancer rates and therefore provide a false comparison.
The figures are also all estimates.
The article points to the American Cancer Society (ACS) as the source of the figures.
The 26,000 pre-COVID vaccine figure relates to 2019, 2020 and 2021 estimates of cases in women under 45, not the entire population as is claimed.
The main document the article points to reveals the ACS's estimate for all new cases in 2019 was 268,600 (page 10)
The post-COVID vaccine figure of 297,000 appears to come from ACS estimates for 2023 (297,790).
There is no "younger than 45" estimate in the 2023 figures. Instead, the ACS increased the range to include women up to 50.
Therefore the nearest comparable figure to the 26,000 is 48,780 (younger than 50).
The change in age range came ahead of the 2022 figures, which also explains what the article describes as a rapid increase of "more than 20,000 cases to 47,000" between 2021 and 2022.
The latest data from the ACS shows the overall rate of increase for breast cancer cases in the US is one per cent per year for all ages and 1.4 per cent for women under 50.
A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told AAP FactCheck that there is no evidence of COVID-19 vaccines causing any type of cancer, including breast cancer.
"After more than 676 million doses administered, safety monitoring has not established an association between COVID-19 vaccination and an increased risk for any cancers," the CDC spokesperson said in an email.
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