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Belly of a heavily pregnant woman (symbolic image)
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Should pregnant women be vaccinated against corona or not?
The answer to this question depends not only on possible risks from the vaccination, but also on how dangerous Covid-19 is for pregnant women.
A British study now provides new information.
It suggests that the risk of corona for expectant mothers has increased over the course of the pandemic.
The chief midwife of the English health service Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent took the investigation as an opportunity to call pregnant women to vaccinate.
In a letter, she appealed to midwives and doctors to encourage women to vaccinate in order to protect themselves and their babies.
What is this study about?
More serious illnesses today than a year ago
For the pre-published study, a team of researchers analyzed the data of more than 3,300 pregnant women who were hospitalized with a corona infection in the UK between March 2020 and July 2021.
Sometimes only the birth was the reason for the hospital stay, sometimes the Covid disease.
The evaluation showed that in the course of the pandemic and with the spread of new variants, the proportion of pregnant women with severe Covid courses increased significantly.
Since not every woman was analyzed with which variant she was infected, the researchers based their evaluation on the time of infection:
They assigned all cases between March 1 and November 30, 2020 to the original variant;
all cases between December 1, 2020 and May 15, 2021 of the alpha variant and
all cases between May 16 and July 11, 2021 of the Delta variant.
While only 24 percent of the pregnant women in the clinic suffered from moderate to severe Covid 19 disease at the beginning of the pandemic, the proportion increased to 36 percent during the alpha variant and 45 percent during the delta variant.
After the spread of the alpha variant, women also needed more help with breathing, developed pneumonia more often and had to be treated more frequently in the intensive care unit.
With the Delta variant, the proportion of those affected with pneumonia increased again, writes the research team led by Nicola Vousden from the University of Oxford.
There was no woman among the sick who had been double vaccinated.
Only four of the more than 700 women whose vaccination status was known had received one of two syringes.
In addition, the researchers also took into account the influence of previous illnesses such as asthma or diabetes on the risk of disease in the analysis.
It was noticeable that the majority of the women affected were overweight or obese during the entire pandemic.
Despite the extensive data, biases in the results cannot be ruled out.
It is conceivable that the treatment of pregnant women has changed in the course of the pandemic and, for example, due to the high occupancy of the clinics during the alpha wave, only more severe cases were admitted to the clinic.
However, that would not explain why the values also remained high during the delta expansion.
"No vaccinated woman was hospitalized"
"This is an important study," said Andrew Shennan, a professor of obstetrics at King's College London who was not involved in the study, the UK's Science Media Center.
The database is very credible.
"No vaccinated woman was admitted to the hospital, which underlines the importance of vaccination during pregnancy as well."
In Great Britain, the corona vaccination has been recommended for all pregnant women since mid-April. In Germany, however, there is currently no general vaccination recommendation for pregnant women. Too little data is still available, the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) justifies its caution. She is currently only considering a corona vaccination for expectant mothers who have an increased risk of infection or who have a high risk of severe Covid-19 disease due to previous illnesses.
The medical societies also advocate not excluding pregnant women from vaccination programs in principle. "In particular, pregnant women with previous illnesses, a high risk of a severe course of Covid-19 or a high risk of exposure to a SARS-CoV-2 infection can be offered the vaccination after risk-benefit assessment and after detailed information," it says in one Opinion.
The German Society for Perinatal Medicine registered 2686 pregnant women who were admitted with Covid-19 in a German clinic by July 29th this year.
106 had to be treated in the intensive care unit or have died.
The Robert Koch Institute basically rates the probability as low that pregnant women with Covid-19 end up in the intensive care unit and have to be ventilated.
However, the risk is higher than with non-pregnant women.
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