Almost all of the pregnant women hospitalized with the virus had not received a dose in the UK.
- Of the 742 pregnant women hospitalized for Covid-19 examined in the study, only 4 were vaccinated.
- Infection increases the number of premature babies.
With the expansion of the vaccination campaign in France, more and more people are now protected against serious forms of Covid-19. For pregnant women, access to vaccination from the first month of pregnancy was only opened on July 20. That day, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, assured during a session of questions to the government in the National Assembly that there was “no contraindication to the messenger RNA vaccine”, including the first trimester of pregnancy”. Before this date, they were given priority to be administered the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines, but only from the second trimester of pregnancy.
“Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect yourself and your baby”
For several months, reluctance has been expressed by part of the population about the side effects of the vaccine. Pregnant women are not excluded. Some of them fear for the health of their baby and decide not to be vaccinated. A choice that can be risky if they are infected with Covid-19. In the United Kingdom, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG), an institution representing midwives, encourages them to get vaccinated. “Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect yourself and your baby from Covid-19, it’s as simple as that.”explains its director in a press release published on July 30. This same document refers to a study of pregnant women with Covid-19, pre-published a few days earlier.
Pregnant women develop more serious forms
The study in question claims that pregnant women with Covid-19 in the UK are at higher risk of developing severe forms of the disease if they are not vaccinated. A risk all the greater with the increasing presence of the Delta variant. To arrive at their results, the researchers analyzed the cases of 3,371 pregnant women who were hospitalized with Covid-19 between March 2020 and July 11, 2021 in the United Kingdom. About 45% of the 3,371 expectant mothers had been hospitalized due to the virus. Among them, 41% had the classic virus and 54% the Delta variant. On the other hand, for those who developed severe forms, they were more affected by the Delta variant (45%) – of which a third needed an artificial respirator – than by the traditional strain (25%), of which only a fifth of them needed a ventilator. Finally, this contamination with Covid-19 also had consequences for babies, with premature births, that is to say before the 28th week of amenorrhea.
Almost all were not vaccinated at all
The scientists then wanted to analyze the number of future mothers vaccinated. But these data were only available for 742 of the participants. Of these, only four had received a dose of vaccine, all the others had received none. The authors therefore conclude that vaccination protects pregnant women since almost all of those hospitalized were not. “It is very good news to see that so few vaccinated pregnant women have been hospitalized with Covid-19. However, it is very worrying to note that hospitalizations of pregnant women due to Covid-19 are increasing and that they seem to be more severely affected by the Delta variant, concludes Marian Knight, one of the authors of the study. Only last week there were around 200 pregnant women hospitalized with Covid-19. I can’t stress enough how important it is for pregnant women to get vaccinated!”
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