The Canadian National Vaccine Safety Network collected data from 191,360 vaccinated women aged 15 to 49 between December 2020 and November 2021. Researchers asked participants to report “major health events” that were serious enough to cause them to miss school or work , seek medical help or disrupt their routine. Of the 5,597 pregnant participants, 4 percent reported a major health event within seven days of receiving the first dose of mRNA vaccine, and 7.3 percent of the 3,108 pregnant respondents said they had side effects from their second shots. Among those who were not pregnant, 6.3 percent of the 174,765 respondents reported a major health event after the first dose, and 11.3 percent of the 10,254 participants said they felt sick after the second dose. “One of the things that was really striking was that the rates of these events in pregnant women were lower than the rates occurring in non-pregnant women of the same age,” said Manish Sadarangani, lead author of the paper published in the Lancet. Journal of Infectious Diseases on Thursday. “It’s very reassuring about the safety of vaccines for COVID and pregnancy.” Studies of other vaccines have found that pregnant women experience side effects at about the same rate as non-pregnant women, or even slightly higher, said Sadarangani, a researcher at BC Children’s Hospital. More research is needed to understand why this might not be the case for COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, Sadarangani said, but he suspects that the physical transformation of pregnancy could be a factor. “There are a lot of hormonal, immunological and physiological changes that happen during pregnancy, and some of them we understand, some of them we don’t,” she said. “I guess some of those changes are driving those lower rates.” Thursday’s study found that rates of serious health events after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, such as hospitalization, were equally rare in all groups. There was no significant difference in miscarriage or stillbirth rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated participants. Researchers are conducting a follow-up study to see if participants experienced side effects six months after their COVID-19 shots, Sadarangani said. Pregnant people are at increased risk of complications from COVID-19, she said, so it’s even more important that researchers continue to study how vaccination affects them and their babies. “All the data we have really underscores the safety of all these vaccines in pregnancy,” Sadarangani said. “Ultimately, that’s the best way to protect this group of people in our population.” This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 12, 2022.
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