CDC: Pregnant women can get vaccine
Director: ‘No safety concerns’ for women, their babies in more than 35K vaccinated
>> Pregnant women confused by conflicting recommendations regarding coronavirus vaccination over the past few months now have clear guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Get the shots.
At a White House COVID-19 briefing Friday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that surveillance systems of vaccinations showed “no safety concerns” for more than 35,000 women in their third trimester or for their babies.
“We know that this is a deeply personal decision,” she added, “and I encourage people to talk to their doctors and their primary care providers to determine what is best for them and for their baby.”
Walensky explained that because the initial vaccine trials did not include pregnant women, there had been limited data on possible issues. As a result, different health authorities and professional medical groups had offered cautious, or even conflicting, guidance.
The CDC had previously suggested that pregnant women make their decisions in consultation with their doctors. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist said coronavirus vaccines “should not be withheld from pregnant individuals” but stopped short of explicitly recommending it.
In contrast, the World Health Organization had said only those pregnant women at a high risk of contracting the virus, or of having a severe case should take the vaccine.
But data presented in early March and officially published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday from several national surveillance systems supported an optimistic outlook, even as researchers
urged further study.
Information on thousands of pregnant women taken from the CDC Safe App and the Safe Pregnancy Registry, as well as the vaccine adverse event reporting
system, showed they experienced side effects similarly to the rest of the population - mostly minor things like pain in the injection site, headaches, chills and fever.
The two most popular vaccines in the United States, made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, had also been the subject of concern
and false rumors due to the fact that they use a new technology known as messenger RNA.
According to the latest poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation on attitudes toward covid vaccinations, the percentage of Americans willing to get a vaccine is growing, with 32 percent in March saying
they had already gotten one and 30 percent saying they will get one as soon as they are able. About 13 percent, however, said they will still definitely not get a shot, and the most common reason stated was the vaccines are too new and we do not have information about long-term side effects.