The COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna don’t appear to cause any serious risks for pregnant women, according to a new study.
- The study — published in the New England Journal of Medicine — suggests that the benefits of a COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the risks of not getting the vaccine for pregnant women.
The study reviewed data for 35,691 pregnant women from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2020 who had answered surveys from the CDC, as well as data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which measures any adverse events among those who receive the vaccine, according to CNN.
The study found 3,958 of the 35,691 pregnant women got the mRNA vaccine from either Moderna or Pfizer. Many of the participants were still pregnant at the time of the study and had not given birth yet.
- In total, 827 people completed their pregnancy. Of those, 115 “experienced a pregnancy loss,” according to CNN, and 712 had a live birth, per CNN.
- “Preterm births occurred in 9.4% of participants and only 3.2% of these births were small gestational age. There were no neonatal deaths reported,” according to CNN.
Are pregnant women at risk for severe COVID-19?
Pregnant women are at an increased risk of severe illness related to COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.
- “Although the overall risk of severe illness is low, pregnant people are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 when compared to non-pregnant people,” according to the CDC.
And, according to the CDC, pregnant people who get COVID-19 “might also be at increased risk for other poor outcomes, such as preterm birth (delivering the baby earlier than 37 weeks).”