Yet, according to the CDC, only 41% of pregnant women have received vaccination against COVID-19.
This is despite guidance from the CDCTrusted Source and other medical organizations, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, recommending vaccination against COVID-19 for pregnant individuals.
The lower vaccination rate in pregnant women reflects their concerns about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
A large CDC study now adds to previous research showing that receiving a COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy does not adversely affect the health of the newborn.
. Pregnant women with COVID-19 are at a higher riskTrusted Source for severe illness and death than nonpregnant individuals.
It uses electronic health records from participating healthcare sites to assess the safety of vaccines. In contrast, SGA at birth describes babies who are smaller or less developed than 90% of newborns of the same gestational age. The clinical trials that researchers conducted to test the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines did not involve pregnant people.
However, subsequent studies showed no obvious safety concerns associated with COVID-19 vaccines on the health of pregnant people or newborns.
Yet many of these studies have involved a small sample size or lacked a control group of unvaccinated pregnant individuals.
The present study investigated the impact of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy on birth outcomes while addressing these shortcomings.
To study the impact of vaccination on birth outcomes, the researchers compared the rates of preterm birth and SGA at birth for vaccinated and unvaccinated pregnant women.
Preterm birth refers to the baby being born before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Vaccine Safety Datalink is a collaboration between CDC and nine health care organizations. Gestational age refers to the duration of pregnancy, starting from the time of the person’s last period.
The researchers examined the effects of vaccination on preterm birthTrusted Source and SGATrusted Source due to the association of these factors with an increased risk of mortality and adverse health outcomes for the newborn.
The researchers estimated preterm birth and SGA at birth rates using birth records and electronic health data from Vaccine Safety DatalinkTrusted Source.
Fell, who was not involved in the study, said, From other studies of [SARS-CoV-2] infection over the past 18 months, we know that there is an increased risk of preterm birth, in particular, following [SARS-CoV-2] infection during pregnancy. Over 98% of these women received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in either the second or third trimester of their pregnancy.
After controlling for variables, the researchers found that the prevalence of preterm birth and SGA at birth was similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated pregnant women.
Moreover, the trimester when the participant received the first or only COVID-19 dose did not impact the risk of preterm births or SGA at birth. Similarly, the number of mRNA vaccine doses that individuals received during pregnancy did not influence the prevalence of these adverse birth outcomes.
Medical News Today spoke to The present study involved 46,079 pregnant women aged between 16 and 49 years, whose pregnancies were estimated to have started between May and October 2020.
Of the unvaccinated pregnant women, 38.4% were Hispanic, 32.2% were white, non-Hispanic, 15.7% were Asian, non-Hispanic, and 9.1% were Black, non-Hispanic. In the vaccinated pregnant women group, these percentages were: 24.5, 43, 25.6, and 2.7, respectively.
The researchers found that only around 21% of the pregnant women from the study had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine between December 2020 and July 2021.
Most of them received the Pfizer (54.4%) or Moderna (41.4%) mRNA vaccines, while only 4.2% had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Deshayne Fell, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
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