Four percent more unvaccinated pregnant women had health complications than pregnant women who received the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 after a week in a new study.
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is reportedly completely safe to take during pregnancy, according to a large Canadian study that was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Friday.
The peer-reviewed study, conducted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada, compared health events between groups of pregnant women that were vaccinated and unvaccinated against the novel coronavirus.
One of the conclusions that the study reached was that, within a week, of the pregnant women who took the second dose of mRNA vaccine, 7.3% of them experienced health events that made them miss work, school or require medical attention — as opposed to 11.3% who felt this way but didn’t take the vaccine — which is 4% more.
3.2% of unvaccinated pregnant women said they had health incidents within a week. The reason this is important is that it suggests that any symptoms that vaccinated pregnant women have are not due to the vaccine, which authors of the study say that it reinforces the safety the vaccine provides — including during pregnancy.
COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy: What do experts say?
“In the early stages of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout there was low vaccine uptake among pregnant people due to concerns about data availability and vaccine safety,” said Dr. Manish Sadarangani from the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Research Institute, and the first author on this study.
“Large, observational studies like ours are crucial for proper understanding of the rates of adverse health events in pregnant women after different doses of COVID-19 vaccination, she continued.
“In the early stages of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout there was low vaccine uptake among pregnant people due to concerns about data availability and vaccine safety.”
Dr. Manish Sadarangani
All the women who participated in the study are around the same age.
COVID vaccines in the past have been recommended for use for pregnant women and medical professionals have repeatedly dispelled the misinformation that it is dangerous for the fetus to do so.