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We are all looking forward to the long-awaited arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine. I could even put it on my Christmas wish list this year.
The successful trials and high efficacy rates of the COVID-19 vaccine have been a welcome highlight in an otherwise terrible year riddled with disappointing headlines. The vaccine will be available to high-risk people first, including healthcare professionals, nursing home residents, older Americans, and other essential workers.
Should expectant mothers also be included in this high-risk group?
Will it be safe for pregnant women to get the vaccine? We are still in the initial phase of clinical trials to produce a vaccine that will be a worthy adversary against the new coronavirus. This is what we know at the moment in this most recent study.
Why should pregnant women be considered high risk?
Before delving into the details of this study, I would like to remind readers that more research is required to truly determine the risks involved through inoculation against this virus in pregnant women.
Obviously, we will know more when the vaccine is approved for use to the general public. A co-author of the ongoing study advocates that pregnant women be considered among other high-risk patients with the first doses of the vaccine.
“Based on data collected over the past few months, the CDC and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that pregnant women are at a slightly higher risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19. They are also at higher risk of dying from the virus than their non-pregnant counterparts. “
This would not be the first time women have been vaccinated against a fatal disease during pregnancy or while breastfeeding. Flu vaccines are completely safe to administer during pregnancy, and these antibodies are also transmitted to the child through the placenta or during breastfeeding. It’s like a two-for-one protection deal against a fatal virus for both of you!
Of the 42,000 pregnant women who had a positive diagnosis for COVID-19, 55 of those women succumbed to the disease. While a vaccine has the power to cross protective blood barriers into the placenta to protect your newborn baby, unfortunately, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can also travel in the amniotic fluid protecting and supplying nutrients to your child.
A disturbing new study described how the spikey proteins that make up the exterior of this virus act like a battering ram to tear down any protective barriers in its path. This could be why some doctors found traces of the virus on the fetal side of the placenta, umbilical cords, and the new mother’s breast milk. Again, more research is required to find out whether transmission occurred within the uterus during pregnancy or after the baby was born.
At the height of COVID-19 infection rates in northern Italy, doctors took samples from 31 COVID-19-positive women who gave birth. Doctors found RNA material from the virus in 1 umbilical cord blood sample, 2 vaginal swabs, and 1 breast milk sample. The researchers also found antibodies in umbilical cord blood and breast milk.
While the following results are not conclusive enough to alleviate widespread panic, it is best to err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting yourself and your newborn.
Dr. Ashley Roman is a pregnancy specialist at NYU Langone Health and has some wisdom to impart the following statement to all pregnant women.
“The new report adds to the evidence that transmission in utero is possible, but seems rare and does not cause serious problems in babies. The most important thing for pregnant women to know is that social distancing is important. It is important to wear a mask, wash your hands. Women do not need to be completely isolated from society, but they should be concerned about the impact of contracting COVID on their own health during pregnancy. “
Food to go
With the knowledge that pregnant women are at particularly high risk for fatal complications associated with the new coronavirus, we should consider including them in future clinical trials.
The reason we are so unsure about the safety details of this vaccine when it comes to affecting the well-being of pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and their babies (by proxy) is because no women were included pregnant in the preliminary test. essays. To test the true efficacy of the vaccine, we must include all high-risk people. According to this press release, excluding pregnant women from vaccine-related clinical trials is nothing new.
“Despite the decades-long push to include pregnant women as subjects in clinical research, it’s actually not uncommon to exclude pregnant women from the early stages of vaccine development, when researchers are actually testing safety. For example, pregnant women were not included in the initial trials of the H1N1 vaccine. So even though they were identified as a high-risk population, there was no data available on what kind of doses they should receive. “
Make sure you stay up-to-date with all new information released by the CDC to better protect yourself and your loved ones against this insidious virus.
