Guidance from the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) now recommends that women who are pregnant or breastfeeding receive the COVID-19 vaccine at the same time as women who are not pregnant.
This update from JCVI means that more women will benefit from the protection of the vaccine, thus increasing the effectiveness of the vaccination programme as a whole.
Representatives of Cayman’s Ministry of Health continue to encourage everyone to be vaccinated, especially in light of the upcoming expiration dates of current vaccine supplies. If members of the public are able to receive their first vaccines by June 9th, the Public Health Department will be able to utilise all of the vaccines before they expire at the end of June.
The nature of the vaccines available is such that they cannot cause infection in neither mother nor baby. No known risks are linked with inactivated, recombinant viral or bacterial vaccines or toxoids during pregnancy or while breastfeeding, according to the new JCVI guidance. Clinical trials of the Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines revealed no issues with reproduction or development in animals.
Clinical trials testing the vaccine in pregnant women are just starting, but robust real-world data from the US – where around 90,000 pregnant women have been vaccinated mainly with mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – have not raised any safety concerns. Therefore, the JCVI is advising that it is preferable for the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccines to be offered to pregnant women.
JCVI recommends that a woman who has started a course of vaccine before finding out she is pregnant continue the course with the same vaccine product, unless specifically contraindicated. Vaccination should be offered to women as soon as possible after becoming pregnant, but like many decisions that take place during and after pregnancy, the decision to become vaccinated is one that women are recommended to discuss with their doctors.
In the United States, because the vaccines received emergency authorisation, copious data on women who have been vaccinated has been collected. More than 100,000 pregnant women in the US have received the vaccine, and almost 5,000 women have enrolled in a registry run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No safety concerns related to the vaccine have been reported to the CDC so far.
All of the staff at Integra have received both doses of the vaccine. The Obstetrics Team at Integra has already encouraged our pregnant women to go ahead with the vaccination in view of the new evidence.
Up until two weeks ago, the COVID-19 vaccination was only being offered to pregnant women when their risk of exposure to the virus is high, such as health and social care workers, or if they have underlying conditions that place them at high risk of complications of COVID-19.
Vaccination offers pregnant women the best protection from COVID-19, which can be serious in some women. We know pregnant women can get unwell with COVID-19; one in five pregnant women who become unwell and are admitted to hospital will have a premature birth.
We believe it should be a woman’s choice whether to have the vaccine or not after considering the benefits and risks. We at Integra encourage all of our pregnant women to discuss with us regarding their concerns about the vaccine and make an informed choice. And thus empower our pregnant women to make the decision that is right for them.
