The largest US vaccine safety data do not show COVID-19 vaccines raising tinnitus risk — no disproportionate reporting in VAERS and no signal in the Vaccine Safety Datalink — though the researchers could not definitively exclude it.
This is a separate question from tinnitus after COVID infection, and it deserves the same evidence-first treatment: direct about where the data is reassuring and where real uncertainty remains.
What large-scale safety monitoring found
A 2024 study analysed two of the largest post-market vaccine safety systems in the US: the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). VAERS received up to 84.82 tinnitus reports per million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered between 2020 and 2024. Critically, data mining found no disproportionate reporting of tinnitus for any COVID-19 vaccine, and a separate tree-based analysis of the VSD found no statistical signal for tinnitus either.
The VSD also compared tinnitus visit rates in the 140 days after vaccination. COVID-19 vaccines were generally comparable to influenza vaccine, with one exception: adults 65 and older had slightly higher tinnitus visit rates after Moderna (165 per 10,000 person-years) and Pfizer-BioNTech (154) than after influenza vaccine (135).
Why "no disproportionate signal" isn't quite the same as "definitely no connection"
The researchers were careful about their own conclusion: their findings do not support an increased risk of tinnitus following COVID-19 vaccination, but cannot definitively exclude the possibility. They noted that the comparisons between COVID-19 and influenza vaccines could not adjust for potential confounding factors — differences between the groups beyond the vaccine itself. That is an appropriately hedged conclusion, not a dismissal. Large safety-monitoring systems are good at detecting big, common signals, and less definitive on rarer, harder-to-isolate ones.
What people who reported new tinnitus experienced
Separate from the population-level data, a structured online survey of 770 adults who reported new or worsened tinnitus after COVID-19 vaccination (collected between August 2021 and May 2023) found substantial reported impact: moderate to severe tinnitus-related distress, with the greatest effects on emotional control, sleep and the ability to relax. Many described difficulty following conversation in noisy or multi-talker settings, and a substantial subset reported hyperacusis symptoms. The pattern mirrored tinnitus more broadly.
This is a self-selected sample — people who noticed a connection and sought out the survey — so it cannot establish how common the experience is or prove that the vaccine caused it, and its authors say causality cannot be determined. It does document that for people who experienced this pattern, the impact was significant, not a minor inconvenience to be waved away.
A subgroup finding, and a conclusion to read carefully
An earlier study from some of the same researchers analysed 398 survey cases of tinnitus that people linked to COVID-19 vaccination, alongside VAERS reports retrieved in December 2021. It found tinnitus reported at 47, 51 and 70 cases per million fully vaccinated people for the Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen vaccines, onset that was often rapid, more reports from women than men, and pre-existing metabolic conditions correlated with how severe the reported tinnitus was. If that last finding holds up, any elevated risk may sit with a specific subgroup rather than being spread evenly across vaccine recipients.
Its authors went further and concluded that vaccination increases the risk of tinnitus. That conclusion goes beyond what the design can show. Reporting rates and a survey of people who already link their tinnitus to a vaccine cannot say whether tinnitus is more common after vaccination than it would have been anyway; that needs a comparison. The larger 2024 analysis supplied one, comparing reporting across vaccines and visit rates against influenza vaccine, and found no clear signal outside the small difference in older adults.
What to do if tinnitus started after a COVID-19 vaccine
The evaluation is the same as for tinnitus with any other trigger: a hearing test, a check for other contributing causes, and the usual evidence-based approaches, such as sound therapy and CBT if the tinnitus is distressing. Your experience and its impact stand regardless of how the population-level statistics eventually settle. A sudden drop in hearing alongside the tinnitus is the exception that needs urgent assessment rather than waiting; sudden sensorineural hearing loss explains why. And this is a topic where checking the primary safety-monitoring data directly beats relying on secondhand claims from either side of the debate.