(Contributed)
Study: Pregnant women who receive COVID vaccines not at greater health risks
A new Yale study finds that women who received their COVID-19 vaccination while pregnant were not at any greater risk of premature birth or giving birth to lower-weight babies than pregnant women who did not receive vaccines.
Pregnant women who contract COVID-19 have an increased risk of severe disease and death, Yale researchers reported, but only 31% of pregnant women in the U.S. had received the vaccine as of September.
The findings were reported Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has continued to recommend vaccination for women who are pregnant, recently became pregnant, looking to become pregnant or might become pregnant in the future.
The CDC issued an emergency advisory last fall recommending "urgent action" for women to get vaccinated before or during pregnancy, because, it said, "the benefits of vaccination outweigh known or potential risks." The CDC reported that as of Sept. 17, 2021, more than125,000 COVID-19 cases had been reported in pregnant people, including more than 22,000 hospitalized cases and 161 deaths.
Dr. S. Mark Albini, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Saint Mary's Hospital in Waterbury. (Contributed)
Still, vaccination among pregnant women remains relatively low, although it is higher in some racial groups, including Asians (45.7%), and low among others, like Hispanics (25%) and Blacks (15.9%).
Other researchers have found vaccine hesitancy stems from a lack of long-term data regarding safety of the vaccine for pregnant women and their children.
"This has been an ongoing issue and I think, at least to me, it was settled by this past summer when we finally got some results in tests about women who got pregnant and got COVID while pregnant," said Dr. S. Mark Albini, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Saint Mary's Hospital in Waterbury. "Here's what we know: There's a lot of misinformation out there. But what we know is that if you are pregnant and you get COVID-19, there's increased chance of preterm delivery, increased chance of stillbirth, increased chance of severe disease and increased chance of dying."
Albini said he recommends the vaccine to all pregnant women.
"The biggest thing is unknown. Any vaccine we've ever invented, all the acute things you see eight weeks after the vaccine has been administered. But people are worried about 'how do we know about 10 or 20 years from now?' My answer is we don't, but there's no reason to believe that this vaccine will be any different than any other vaccine we've had."
The Yale co-led study looked at more than 40,000 pregnant individuals. Of those, 22% received at least one vaccine dose during their pregnancy; most of those, 98.3%, in their second or third trimester. The overwhelming percentage of those vaccinated received the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines.
"Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is important for preventing severe illness in pregnant people," said Heather Lipkind, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study.
"With the increasing rates of COVID-19 in our community, we are encouraging pregnant people to get vaccinated," she added.
The CDC and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant or might become pregnant in the future.
SOURCEREPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
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