A new study shows that women who were vaccinated with Covid while pregnant are not at higher risk of having babies prematurely delivered or giving birth to babies of unusually small size than those who were not vaccinated.
The reassuring news was that the study, which was the first to look at the health of babies born from mothers who were vaccinated during pregnancy and the results were encouraging. Babies born at low birthweight and infants born earlier are more likely than others to develop developmental delays or other health problems.
A previous study found that women who were vaccinated before giving birth did not have a higher chance of miscarriage than those who were not.
The study examined 46,079 singleton pregnancies which resulted in live births. It also included 10,064 women who received at least one dose of Covid vaccine during their pregnancies between Dec. 15, 2020 and July 22, 2021. The vast majority of the women had received the vaccines made available by Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech, and most were inoculated in the second or third trimester.
Overall, 6.6% of the babies were prematurely born, meaning they were born before 37 weeks of gestation. 8.2 percent were small for their gestational weight, weighing less that 5 pounds and 8 ounces. Researchers found no difference in rates between mothers who had been vaccinated while they were pregnant and those who hadn’t.
“We plan to do follow-up studies on infants and their development, but there hasn’t been enough time to do them yet,” said Dr. Heather S. Lipkind, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Yale University and lead author on the new research.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collaborated with Dr. Lipkind, HealthPartners Institute researchers, Kaiser Permanente researchers, and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute to conduct the study.
The risks of pre-term birth, which appear to be higher when pregnant women are infected with the coronavirus, are well established, she said: “With each week of gestation, the brain develops more. If you have Covid and have to deliver preterm, that can also affect long-term development.”
Dr. Lipkind said that vaccination can also help protect infants from illness because coronavirus antibodies may be passed on by mothers.
Pregnant women who contract the disease are at greater risk of developing severe illness. Federal health officials have asked them to get vaccinated. Nevertheless, vaccination rates remain low among pregnant women — about 31 percent as of late September.
The rates of vaccination vary from one community to the next. According to the C.D.C., while almost half of all pregnant Asian Americans are vaccinated and only 25% of pregnant Hispanic women are vaccinated. Only 15% of pregnant Black women are vaccinated.
“I can tell you, anecdotally, that in my practice women who are not vaccinated are for sure getting way sicker,” Dr. Lipkind said, “and we’re seeing pre-term birth in pregnant women who had Covid and loss of pregnancy. It’s very, very tragic.”
She encourages her patients to get vaccinated especially since the Omicron variant, which is highly contagious, is currently circulating. She said that she faces fierce resistance sometimes.
“I think people are just afraid of the unknown in general with pregnancy,” Dr. Lipkind said. “This new research should make people feel a little better about vaccination.”
Source: NY Times