Outcomes Point to a More Urgent Need for COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnant Women

As JUCM News readers know, it wasn’t that long ago that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first recommended that all pregnant women get vaccinated against COVID-19. So it may be especially striking that they’ve already renewed that call with greater emphasis, announcing that they recommend “urgent action to increase coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination among people who are pregnant, recently pregnant (including those who are lactating), who are trying to become pregnant now, or who might become pregnant in the future.” The CDC cites evidence that the benefits of vaccination outweigh any known risks of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, noting that out of 125,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 that have occurred in pregnant women in the U.S. there have been 22,000 hospitalizations and 161 deaths. According to data from the COVID-19-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET), around 97% of pregnant people hospitalized, whether for illness or for labor and delivery, with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were unvaccinated.