New study: Corona vaccination protects pregnant women

Many pregnant women are unsure: Should they be vaccinated against Covid-19, can the vaccination harm the baby?

It is known that an illness with Covid-19 during pregnancy can have serious consequences for mother and child, such as severe high blood pressure, preeclampsia or premature birth.

Comprehensive data from a national health study from Scotland now show that a corona vaccination during pregnancy can protect not only the mother but also the child.

From December 1, 2020 to the end of October 2021, almost 5,000 SARS-CoV-2 infections in pregnant women were diagnosed here: more than 77 percent of the infected women had not been vaccinated.

One in five unvaccinated pregnant women had to be treated in hospital, compared to one in twenty of those who were vaccinated.

And of those who were so seriously ill that they needed intensive care, 98 percent were unvaccinated, as the research team led by perinatal physician Sarah Stock from the University of Edinburgh reports in

.

Pregnant women in intensive care units almost exclusively unvaccinated

Whether the expectant mother was vaccinated also affected the child: Of 2364 babies born to mothers who were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the study period, 11 were stillborn and 8 died shortly after of birth. In all of the deaths, the mothers were not vaccinated, most had contracted SARS-CoV-2 just a few weeks before the birth. The death rate was therefore higher in unvaccinated pregnant women than in vaccinated or the normal population. Since the researchers did not have detailed medical records, they could not provide any information on how the Covid 19 disease had contributed to the accidents.

The risk of having to be treated in hospital was generally higher in expectant mothers if they became infected late in their pregnancy. Between the start of the vaccination campaign at the end of 2020 and October 31, 2021, around 18,500 pregnant women in Scotland were vaccinated. Of all pregnant women who gave birth in October 2021, only 32 percent were fully vaccinated, compared to 77 percent in the general population.

The reasons for this vaccination backlog, which is almost the same as in other industrialized nations, are different: First, a vaccination was only recommended for pregnant women with a delay - in Great Britain on April 16, 2021 - whereas the vaccination campaign for the rest of the population, started with medical staff and vulnerable people Groups of people, had already started in December 2020. In the hasty approval process for the vaccines, pregnant women were initially not considered separately.

When the recommendation was subsequently issued - test subjects who had unexpectedly become pregnant during the approval process proved the safety of the vaccines for expectant mothers - opponents of vaccination deliberately spread false reports, for example that a vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 would make infertile.

Although no evidence was ever provided and doctors debunked such myths, many pregnant women were probably unsettled - and did not get vaccinated.

Since the vaccination campaign for pregnant women only started with a delay and there was already skepticism about the vector vaccine from AstraZeneca at the time it started, most Scottish women who were expecting a child and were vaccinated received the vaccine from Biontech.