CDC recommends pregnant women get COVID-19 vaccine

Pregnant women should get the COVID-19 vaccine, said CDC. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, noted at a White House briefing that vaccination surveillance systems found “no safety concerns” for more than 35,000 women in their third trimester or for their babies.

She explained that initial vaccine trials did not include women, so there had been limited data on possible issues, and there was then cautious, or even conflicting guidance as a result. “We know that this is a deeply personal decision,” she said. “I encourage people to talk to their doctors and their primary care providers to determine what is best for them and for their baby.”

Peer-reviewed data from a number of national surveillance systems presented last month, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, back the new recommendation. According to the data on thousands of pregnant women collected from CDC’s Safe App and the Safe Pregnancy Registry, as well as the vaccine adverse event reporting system, between December 14, 2020 and February 28, 2021, pregnant women experienced adverse effects similar to those observed in the rest of the population; primarily minor symptoms such as injection site pain, headache, chills, and fever. Severe reactions were not more common among pregnant women compared with those who were not pregnant, except for nausea and vomiting, which were reported slightly more often among pregnant women following the second dose, the research said. Early data showed no “obvious safety signals” with respect to pregnancy or neonatal outcomes.