US urges pregnant women to get vaccinated against Covid-19 as Delta surges
- Women who received messenger RNA vaccines before 20 weeks of pregnancy have no higher risk of miscarriage, the US CDC said
- The new evidence is particularly important because pregnant women are at high risk of severe Covid-19 outcomes, such as hospitalisation
The new data is particularly important because pregnant women are at high risk of severe Covid-19 outcomes, such as hospitalisation. However, women who are pregnant have been largely kept out of the initial trials of vaccines because of safety concerns during the products’ initial testing.
“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,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Anyone who’s breastfeeding or thinking about becoming pregnant should also be immunised, she said.
As the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads across the US, CDC has heard from clinicians that they’re seeing increasing numbers of pregnant women hospitalised with Covid-19, said Sascha Ellington, team lead for emergency preparedness and response in CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. The agency is keen to get the new data out as quickly as possible and combat any misinformation being spread about vaccine risk, she said.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has also worked to debunk myths about the safety of vaccination, said Martin Tucker, the medical group’s president.
“As Covid-19 cases spike again, pregnant individuals can no longer afford to let their fears prevent them from being vaccinated,” he said.