Virus harms during pregnancy detailed in study
A nurse prepares a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the new coronavirus to be injected at the Andras Josa Teaching Hospital in Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021.[AP/ Attila Balazs/MTI]
A multi-country study suggests pregnant women who get COVID-19 have higher risks for death, intensive-care stays, preterm birth and other complications.
Pregnancy causes various changes in the body that may make women vulnerable to harm from the coronavirus. Pregnant women can gain some protection by getting vaccinated; recent evidence suggests the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are safe to use in pregnancy.
The results were published on Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, which echo smaller studies. The research involved women in 18 countries, including the United States, Central and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The study involved about 700 pregnant women with COVID-19 and 1,400 without it. It was sponsored by a research fund at the University of Oxford, there the lead authors work.
On Wednesday, the preliminary results of a report of 35,000 U.S. women who received either the Moderna or Pfizer shots while pregnant showed their rates of miscarriage, premature births and other complications were comparable to those observed in published reports on pregnant women before the pandemic.