Infants whose mothers were vaccinated against COVID-19 during pregnancy were 61% less likely to be hospitalized with the virus than those whose mothers were not vaccinated while pregnant, according to a new study.
“I cannot emphasize enough how today’s findings reinforce the importance of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy both to protect the people who are pregnant and to help protect their babies,” said Dana Meaney-Delman, M.D., M.P.H., FACOG, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Infant Outcomes Monitoring Research and Prevention Branch.
Previous studies have found evidence that mothers pass SARS-CoV-2 antibodies to their babies through the placenta, but it was unclear how much protection they provided. In a new study published today in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers gathered data from 20 pediatric hospitals from July 2021 to mid-January 2022. They looked at 176 infants under 6 months who were hospitalized with COVID-19 and compared them to 203 infants hospitalized without COVID-19. The two groups had similar prevalence of underlying conditions and prematurity, although infants with COVID-19 were more commonly Black or Hispanic than the control group.
