INDIA’S MILESTONE IN COVID VACCINATION

Two studies in major medical journals add to evidence that COVID19 vaccines are safe before and during pregnancy. One study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, tracked nearly 18,500 pregnant women in Norway, including about 4,500 who had miscarriages. Researchers found no link between COVID19 vaccines and risk of firsttrimester miscarriage, regardless of whether the vaccines were from Moderna (MRNA.O), Pfizer (PFE.N) and Biontech , or Astrazeneca (AZN.L). Overall, the women with miscarriages were 9% less likely to have been vaccinated, according to the researchers’ calculations. In a separate study published on Thursday in The Lancet, researchers tracked 107 women who became pregnant while participating in trials of Astrazeneca’s vaccine in the UK, Brazil and South

Africa. Seventytwo of the women had received the vaccine while the others got a placebo. Astrazeneca’s vaccine had no effect on the odds of safely carrying the pregnancy to term, the researchers reported. “It is important that pregnant women are vaccinated since they have a higher risk of hospitalizations and Covid19complications, and their infants are at higher risk of being born too early,” the authors of the Norwegian study wrote. “Also, vaccination during pregnancy is likely to provide protection to the newborn infant against COVID19 infection in the first months after birth.”

Healthcare workers in France who got a first shot of Astrazeneca’s COVID19 vaccine and then the Pfizer/biontech vaccine for their second shot showed stronger immune responses than those who had received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, in a recent study. Combining different technologies is known to boost immune responses to other viruses, and the current study suggests it may be true for the coronavirus as well. Both vaccines in the study deliver instructions that teach cells in the body to make a piece of protein that resembles the spike on the coronavirus and that triggers an immune response.