Health care workers answer questions about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Sara Whetstone, MD, MHS explains what we know about pregnancy and the COVID vaccines.
Yeah. Great question. One I get many times a day. Unfortunately, despite the urging of many professional organizations, pregnant women were not explicitly studied in the COVID-19 vaccine trials.
In the absence of large studies involving pregnant women is that we have to use the data that was collected amongst non-pregnant women. And overall that data is very reassuring in terms of safety.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, uniformly say that although there is not data in pregnancy, that the COVID-19 vaccine should not be held from those who are pregnant or who are seeking pregnancy. That means that it is our obligation to make sure that individuals who can become pregnant— the vast majority of whom identify as women—have access to the vaccine.
And that hopefully in the future, when we think about developing vaccines, that one day, we’ll make sure that large trials, first and foremost, are also done among those who are pregnant to make sure that we have that data much sooner than we currently do.
