COVID-19 Vaccine Does Not Increase Miscarriage Risk
Hesitate against COVID-19 vaccinations no more, mothers-to-be.
Pregnant women who are vaccinated against COVID-19 with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines do not have an increased risk of miscarriage. So says a new analysis from HealthPartners Institute that studied the health records of more than 105,400 pregnant women.
This new data may encourage more pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Health officials and organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists sounded the alarm against vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women when vaccines first became available earlier this year—and it continues to be a problem.
Only 23% of pregnant women are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the latest CDC figures. This could be attributed to pregnant women being omitted from safety and efficacy studies of the vaccines, though Pfizer is currently conducting a global trial to determine safety, tolerability and efficacy of its vaccine on pregnant women.
Increased risk for severe illness, leading to ICU admission and the use of a ventilator to combat respiratory failure and death are just some of the dangers of not being vaccinated against COVID-19 among pregnant women. Pregnant women are also more likely to die from the infection. COVID-19 infected patients are also more likely to deliver prematurely, leading to devastating effects on the baby.
Women who were part of the HealthPartners Institute study had 13,160 miscarriages (before 20 weeks) and 92,286 ongoing pregnancies. About 8% of pregnant women who had ongoing pregnancies and 8.6% of pregnant women who had miscarriages received a COVID-19 vaccine, revealing that there was no detection of an increased risk of a miscarriage among the two groups.
The results did not vary because of the vaccine brand or the timing of the pregnancy loss (before 20 weeks).
The HealthPartners Institute underlines the results of another analysis spearheaded by the CDC just last month. Miscarriage typically occurs in about 11-16% of pregnancies, the CDC estimates. After recieving the COVID-19 vaccine before 20 weeks of pregnancy, miscarriage rates among the women who were studied were about 13%.
“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 Rochelle Walensky, MD, said of the CDC’s analysis. “ 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.”