Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that there will likely be data about how the COVID-19 vaccine impacts pregnant women and children 6 months old and up by the end of 2021, according to CNBC.
Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said the CDC had already received positive data about the vaccine and pregnant women.
- “We’ll be expecting this summer to have even more data, particularly about vaccines given earlier in pregnancy,” she said at a Senate hearing on the agency’s annual budget,” she said, according to CNBC.
Schuchat said the COVID-19 vaccine is not currently approved for pregnant women. But it’s important to make sure that pregnant women have access to the vaccine. This is because pregnant women are more likely to suffer from severe illness related to COVID-19, according to CNN.
- “Women who are pregnant and get COVID have worse experiences with the infection than do non-pregnant women,” Schuchat said, according to CNBC. “More time in the intensive care unit, more risk of severe outcomes including those rare deaths. COVID also complicates pregnancy by increasing the risk of prematurity and leading to other types of complications.”
Dr. Sean Esplin, Intermountain Healthcare’s medical director of women’s health, told the Deseret News that it’s safe for pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
- “To this point, there are no concerns that we’re seeing among pregnant women to say, ‘Hey, there’s a higher risk in the vaccine during pregnancy.’ That’s really reassuring,” Esplin said, according to the Deseret News.