According to NBC News, Hotez praised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for updating its recommendations and urging the public to get vaccinated during pregnancy, especially since misleading campaigns about vaccines are widespread among pregnant women.
Dr. Peter Hotez Supports The CDC’s Vaccine Recommendation For Pregnant Women
The risk for severe illness is low, but pregnant and recently pregnant women are at increased risk. If the illness leads to death, it is considered to be severe. This includes illnesses requiring hospitalization, intensive care, ventilators, and special breathing equipment. Further, pregnant women with COVID-19 are more likely to have preterm births as well as other adverse pregnancy outcomes compared to pregnant women without the virus.
Other clinical trials investigating the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine in pregnant women are underway or planned. The vaccine manufacturers are also gathering and analyzing data from women who conceived after receiving a vaccine in clinical trials that have been completed.
It is recommended that pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccination at least 12 months before getting pregnant. Your healthcare provider may want to discuss the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination with you if you are pregnant. The practice of such a discussion may be helpful but is not necessary before vaccination. Your healthcare provider does not need to submit any additional documentation for you to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
After receiving your first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine that requires two doses (such as Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine), a pregnant woman must get the second shot to ensure optimum protection. Taking acetaminophen after a vaccination can prevent miscarriage, since fever during pregnancy, regardless of its cause, has been linked to poor pregnancy outcomes.
The anti-vaccine groups published a lot of false information and caused a lot of confusion by claiming that the Covid-19 vaccine can cause infertility, said Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development.
It was a case of copying/pasting their fake news about HPV vaccines for cervical cancer and other cancer, which is also untrue, which was claimed to cause infertility, and pasted it right on Covid-19 vaccines.
A high incidence of Covid-19 infections is continuing to surge as CDC recommends vaccination. Encounters with the highly transmissible delta variant are exceeding 100,000 daily cases in the U.S. At the end of July, CDC statistics indicated that about 23% of pregnant women had been administered the Covid vaccine.
As Hotez noted during his interview on “The News with Shepard Smith” on Wednesday evening, the contracting of Covid-19 is dangerous for some pregnant women.
The frightening part is that thousands of pregnant women have been admitted into pediatric intensive care units, lost their babies, and even lost their own lives because of Covid-19, according to Hotez. There is a strong message that pregnant women have been harmed by this virus.
CONCLUSIONS
- On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines and encouraged pregnant mothers to get vaccinated.
- Dr. Peter Hotez, executive director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, said that the anti-vaccine groups have posted a lot of false information about Covid-19 vaccines causing infertility.
- Hotez emphasized that some pregnant women can even die from contracting Covid-19.
CDC Recommendations for Breastfeeding Women
In addition to people who are breastfeeding, anyone 12 years or older is recommended to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccines COVID-19 currently used in the United States were not tested on breastfeeding women. In part, this is due to a lack of studies on the vaccinations in breastfeeding people.
- The safety of COVID-19 vaccines in nursing mothers
- Immunization and breast-feeding
- Milk production and excretion
Infected mothers and babies cannot contract COVID-19 through the vaccine, and the vaccine prevents the disease in breastfeeding women. In recent reports, antigens identified in the breast milk of breastfeeding people who have received mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 have been proven to protect their babies. To know how these antibodies protect the baby, more data is needed.