The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccination is safe during pregnancy, with a new study of pregnant women showing no increased risk of miscarriages.
“CDC encourages all pregnant people or people who are thinking about becoming pregnant and those breastfeeding to get vaccinated to protect themselves from COVID-19,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “The vaccines are safe and effective, and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible Delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people.”
The recommendation follows the release of a CDC study that involved nearly 2,500 pregnant women who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine before 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The researchers found that miscarriage rates after receiving a vaccine were around 13%, within the expected rate of 11% to 16% of pregnancies in the general population.
Earlier data from three safety monitoring systems also has not indicated any safety concerns for women who were vaccinated late in their pregnancies or for their babies, according to the CDC.
Given the new study, earlier safety monitoring data and the severe risks of coronavirus illness during pregnancy, the CDC said the benefits of pregnant women receiving a vaccine outweigh any known or potential risks.
More pregnant women infected with COVID have been visiting clinicians in the past several weeks. The CDC said the increased risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications linked to COVID-19 infection, the heightened spread of the highly contagious delta variant and low vaccination rates among pregnant women make vaccination for this population “more urgent than ever.”
• Shen Wu Tan can be reached at stan@washingtontimes.com.
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