Women who are pregnant are more vulnerable to developing severe illness after infection with SARS-Cov-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Women who are pregnant are more vulnerable to developing severe illness after infection with SARS-Cov-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Many health professionals and organizations are encouraging women who are pregnant to get vaccinated against the virus, especially as the more contagious delta variant continues to surge across the world.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported back in May that only 16.3% of pregnant women have been vaccinated with one or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think that there’s a misunderstanding that we don’t know enough information about the vaccine and that it might be unsafe and could cause harm to the pregnancy,” said Dr. Carmen Adams, Cook County Health Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, in an interview with ABC 7 Chicago.
Adams was fully immunized with the vaccine before giving birth to a son this year.
“I tolerated the vaccine very well, I had only minimal arm soreness from the vaccine,” Adams said. “And overall, I really didn’t have any side effects from it and so I continue to be healthy and my baby is very healthy.”
Last week, a study from the University of California, San Francisco, reported that women who develop COVID-19 during pregnancy had a higher risk of preterm birth. Women with COVID-19 in this study had a 60% higher risk of very preterm birth during pregnancy. The risk of giving birth at 37 weeks or earlier was 40% higher in women who were infected by the novel coronavirus. Additionally, the preterm birth risk increased 160% in women with metabolic comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension and/or obesity.
“Preterm birth is associated with many challenging outcomes for pregnant people and babies, and every preterm births carry the highest risk of infant complications,” according to a statement made by lead and corresponding author Deborah Karasek, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and investigator at the California Preterm Birth Initiative at UCSF.
Dr. Karasek noted that the findings suggest preventative measures remain extremely important to reduce the risk of COVID-19 among pregnant women.
“Pregnant people may have concerns about vaccines and the health of their baby, so being able to have an open dialogue that values those concerns, describes evidence about safety, and conveys the risks posed by COVID-19 infection during pregnancy is critically important,” she said.
On July 30, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine officially lent their support for COVID-19 vaccination in women who are pregnant. According to the two leading obstetric care organizations, the recommendation for vaccination in this population was based on “evidence demonstrating the safe use of the COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy from tens of thousands of reporting individuals over the last several months, as well as the current low vaccination rates and concerning increase in cases.”
In June, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with no obvious safety concerns in a large group of women who were pregnant (n=35,691). While 13.9% of pregnancies experienced pregnancy loss, 86.1% of pregnancies resulted in a live birth, predominantly in women with vaccination occurring in the third trimester. Preterm birth was reported in 9.4% of pregnancies while a small size for gestational age was reported in 3.2% of pregnancies.
