US CDC recommends pregnant women to take COVID-19 vaccine jabs

The US Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 25, has recommended pregnant women who are confused regarding COVID-19 vaccination to get immunisation shots. 

According to The Washington Post, during a White House briefing on COVID-19, on Friday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that vaccination surveillance systems showed 'no safety concerns' for more than 35,000 women in their third trimester or for their babies. She also said, 

"We know that this is a deeply personal decision and I encourage people to talk to their doctors and their primary care providers to determine what is best for them and for their baby." 

Walensky further explained that because the initial vaccine trials did not include pregnant women, there had been limited data on possible problems. As a result, different health authorities and professional medical groups had offered cautious, or even conflicting, guidance. 

The Washington Post also reported that CDC had previously suggested that pregnant women make their decisions in consultation with their doctors. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said COVID-19 vaccines "should not be withheld from pregnant individuals" but stopped short of explicitly recommending the shots for that population. 

On the contrary, the World Health Organisation had said that only pregnant women at a high risk of contracting contagions of the virus or of having severe COVID-19 should be inoculated with the vaccine. 

However, a peer-reviewed data from several national surveillance systems presented in early March and published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 21 supported an optimistic outlook, even as researchers prodded further study. 

According to the CDC, as many as 290, 685, 655 vaccine doses have been delivered while 225,640,460 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered as of April 24. In the latest poll, about 13 per cent of Americans said that they would definitely not get a shot. The most common reason for the same was that vaccines are quite new and there is no information about long term side or ill effects as well. The two most popular vaccines in the United States made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna had also been the subject of concern and false rumours because they use present-day technology.

COVID-19 mounting crisis in the US

The US is the worst affected country by the pandemic, the country has reported over 31 million COVID-19 cases and over 5,70,000 deaths due to the pernicious virus. Funeral pyres have lit up the night sky in the worst affected cities as the country has set a global record of 3,50,000 fresh COVID-19 cases within 24 hours, which according to experts is a vast undercount.

(with inputs from ANI)