This new study is here to assure pregnant women who may be hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine that it is completely safe for their babies!
According to research on data from Bloomington-based HealthPartners and other big hospitals all around the country, none of the vaccines available currently increase the risk of suffering a miscarriage.
With that being said, medical specialists are hopeful that these conclusive results will hopefully reassure and encourage expectant mothers to get the shot as to protect themselves, their future babies, and many others from the virus.
This was especially necessary since the statistics show that pregnant women have been one of the slowest groups to get vaccinated.
Dr. Elyse Kharbanda, a senior investigator at HealthPartners Institute as well as the lead author on this study, stated that “This is really the first large data analysis of risks of COVID-19 vaccination early in pregnancy. The research we’re presenting is contributing to the evidence out there that the vaccines are safe in pregnancy.”
All throughout the pandemic, there have been many concerns about the way COVID-19 can affect pregnant women and health data, and many unfortunate case reports are proof enough they are a more vulnerable group to infection and severe symptoms.
Despite this, however, many have still been hesitant to get vaccinated due to uncertainly and a lack of clinical data on the potential effects it may have on pregnancy.
Earlier this year, reports started appearing, proving that COVID vaccines manage to create a powerful immune response to the virus, all the while not affecting the placenta in the slightest.
Furthermore, only last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published crucial data that stressed the safety of the vaccines in the case of pregnant women.
The new study involved no less than 105,000 patients who were early in their pregnancies and their data from Dec. 15, 2020, to June 28, 2021.
What they were able to find is that women who had received the vaccine suffered miscarriages at similar rates when those who hadn’t.
More precisely, the Journal of the American Medical Association-published study looked at those who had received two doses of mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer.
Kharbanda says that “The key finding is really that we did not detect an increased risk. The odds of COVID-19 vaccine exposure were not increased in the prior 28 days [before miscarriage] compared to women with ongoing pregnancy.”
This report is also based on data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a project funded by the CDC, meant to monitor vaccine safety, and that includes the HealthPartners Institute as well as 8 other big medical groups in the United States.
The institute received no less than $2 million from federal government funds in order to focus on observing how the COVID-19 vaccines affect pregnant women and their embryos.
More data shows that only around 25% of all pregnant citizens in the United States have received a vaccine against COVID-19 at this point.
Even more concerning is that, according to researchers at Duke University, the new delta variant of the virus has been significantly increasing hospitalizations of COVID-positive pregnant women.
Dr. Geeta Swamy, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University, stated during a news conference last week that women who are also trying to get pregnant should “absolutely” get vaccinated as soon as possible and reassured them that it does not put them and their babies at risk:
“There has been no concern whatsoever that a woman trying to conceive, the vaccine would have any impact on their ability to conceive. There is no evidence that vaccination causes early pregnancy loss.”
