Virus Vaccine call as mums-to-be fall seriously ill
PREGNANT women who have not had the Covid-19 vaccine make up a large proportion of the people in intensive care in Bristol’s hospitals after contracting the virus in the latter stages of their pregnancies.
Now, concerned public health officials have launched a campaign to make sure women who are pregnant get the jab.
In the earlier stages of the vaccination programme, before it had been given to younger women in large numbers, expectant mothers were advised to talk to their GP first about getting the jab. But that message of caution has led to a low uptake in the past few months – and the effects are now being felt in hospitals across Bristol and the South West.
Local NHS bosses and Public Health England said the experience gained from the mass vaccination programme had shown them two things: that not only were the vaccines safe for pregnant women, but that the virus was a lot more serious for women in pregnancy than it would be for other women their age.
Dr Geeta Iyer, pictured inset, the lead clinician for the vaccination programme in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, has confirmed that many of the patients with Covid-19 who end up seriously ill in Bristol’s hospitals are pregnant women who are stricken in the last ten weeks or so of pregnancy when women’s immune systems are generally weakened.
A disproportionate number of the intensive care patients in Bristol with Covid are pregnant women, Dr Iyer said – something backed up by Dr Julie Yates, the consultant and immunisation lead for Public Health England in the South West.
Covid in women over 30 weeks into their pregnancy is leading to emergency C-sections and babies being born prematurely and needing intensive neonatal care, Dr Iyer said.
“There is low vaccine take-up and we do have women in ICU in Bristol who haven’t been vaccinated and have contracted Covid in the latter stages of pregnancy,” she added. “We don’t want to be alarmist or scare anyone about this, but this is the situation.
“Women don’t need to be worried about the safety concerns. It’s quite understandable that pregnant women are concerned, and in the early stages of the vaccination programme the advice was to consult with your GP or midwife, but now there is plenty of data on this – millions of women around the world have been vaccinated against Covid and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the vaccine is not safe for pregnant women.”
Dr Yates said: “We particularly want to encourage pregnant women to be vaccinated. This is in order to protect them, to protect their unborn baby and to prevent them from requiring intensive care, because pregnant women are not more likely to acquire a Covid infection, but if they do, they are more likely to become unwell and they are more likely to require intensive care treatment.
“There is also a much higher risk of complications and stillbirth in pregnant women, so there are lots of reasons to encourage them to have the vaccine.
“The data that we have on vaccine safety is that there are no immediate safety concerns in relation to vaccinating pregnant women. The uncertainty at the beginning was just because they weren’t included in trials.”