La. doctors debunking myths about the COVID vaccine, pregnancy | News
“We are seeing healthy, young women who are getting very sick in the ICU,” said Dr. Jane Martin, an Ochsner Health System maternal/fetal medicine fellow who specializes in high-risk pregnancy care.
Dr. Jane Martin, a maternal/fetal medicine fellow at Ochsner Health System who specializes in high-risk pregnancy care, received her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine when she was 34 weeks pregnant. She has encouraged pregnant women and women of childbearing age to get vaccinated as well.
“We have a ton of women in the hospital who are pregnant with COVID,” Martin added during a Friday media briefing from Ochsner to debunk falsehoods. “They are almost all unvaccinated. … It’s affecting the pregnant women, the fetus, her newborn at home.”
Martin weighed the same decision about whether to receive the coronavirus vaccine while pregnant several months ago. She received her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine when she was 34 weeks pregnant, her second dose when she was 37 weeks pregnant and delivered her healthy baby about a week later.
The decision to get the vaccine was easy, she said, because she was treating severely ill pregnant women in the hospital who had the virus. Since her baby was born six months ago, the volume of information has continued to grow that encourages pregnant women and women of childbearing age to receive the vaccine.
The New England Journal of Medicine published a new study last month specifically on mRNA vaccines — including the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines — and pregnancy. The study found no increased rates of adverse pregnancy outcomes in those who had been vaccinated.
“The good news is we have great data that shows the COVID vaccine does not increase women’s risk of infertility, birth defects, miscarriage or bad pregnancy outcomes,” Martin said.
Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, Ochsner’s medical director of infection control and prevention, said that the virus’ effects have been “devastating to our community.”
“We’re trying to encourage people to talk to their physicians, to go back to their original sources, to dispel misinformation,” she said.
And Dr. Erin Biro, an Ochsner neurosurgeon, spoke of the importance of using both good data and her own personal stories in combating fear around the coronavirus vaccines. Biro has enrolled all three of her children — ages 6, 3½ and 14 months — in clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine is currently only approved for children 12 and up.
She said she was hesitant to do so at first, especially given some data that shows rare side effects of heart inflammation known as myocarditis and pericarditis among children who have been vaccinated.
But “if you actually look at the data, the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID is much, much greater,” she said. And the delta variant of the coronavirus is leading to more severe cases of coronavirus among children, cementing Biro’s decision to enroll her children in the studies.
Pregnant women and women of childbearing age who continue to refuse the vaccine could face a difficult road ahead. Martin pointed to several studies that found pregnant women are at greater risk for severe coronavirus disease, needing to be admitted to intensive care units, being placed on ventilators and even death. Meanwhile, there’s some evidence that pregnant women who have received the coronavirus vaccine pass along protective antibodies to their newborns.
“Your OB-GYN doctors are begging you to go get the COVID vaccine,” she said.
