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COVID vaccines safely protect pregnant people: the data are in

Despite evidence that pregnant people are at high risk of serious disease, many remain unvaccinated.
  1. Shannon Hall
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COVID-19 can strike hard and fast — especially when you are pregnant. Alison Cahill, a specialist in maternal–fetal medicine at the Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas, vividly remembers a patient from the first wave of the pandemic who was 26 weeks pregnant and woke up one morning with a cough. Her condition declined so rapidly that she was admitted to hospital that evening. Within six hours, she had been transferred to the intensive-care unit (ICU), where she was sedated so that she could be placed on a heart–lung bypass machine. Owing to safety precautions, her husband had to communicate with the medical team from the parking area.

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Nature 601, 308-309 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00031-8

Editor’s note: Nature recognizes that transgender men and non-binary people can become pregnant. We occasionally use ‘women’ in this story when discussing studies that used the same language.

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