Two researchers say countries should halt the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant and breastfeeding women after re-analyzing a study performed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers.
The study in question, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April, has been used by the CDC and health agencies in other countries to justify vaccination recommendations to pregnant women and new mothers.
“A U.S. study of over 35,000 women who were pregnant and had an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine showed that the side effects following vaccination were very similar in those who were pregnant when compared to those who were not,” the Australian government says in a guide (pdf) to COVID-9 vaccination for women.
The study, though, was corrected last month after concerns were raised by a researcher in Belgium. The CDC scientists acknowledged they should have made clear that they could not accurately calculate a risk estimate for miscarriages because follow-up data was not yet available for most of the women.
The correction resolved some of the issues, but there are still more, according to Dr. Simon Thornley, a senior lecturer in the University of Auckland’s Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Dr. Aleisha Brock, another researcher in New Zealand.
“The article’s conclusions haven’t changed substantially as we believe is warranted from our re-analysis of the association related to early exposure to the vaccine in pregnancy which indicates a substantially increased risk from background,” Thornley told The Epoch Times in an email.
Thornley and Brock re-analyzed the data and calculated the incidence of miscarriages in the first trimester was actually 82 percent to 91 percent in a paper (pdf) published in Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law.
Of the 827 pregnancies reported through the V-Safe registry, operated by the CDC, 712 resulted in a live birth. Nearly all of them were among women who were vaccinated in the third trimester. Many of the other pregnancies, 104, resulted in miscarriage. Most of those occurred before 13 weeks of gestation.
Using data from the study and several estimates, the New Zealand researchers calculated that spontaneous abortions occurred in 81.9 percent to 91.2 percent of the women who were vaccinated before 20 weeks of gestation.
“We question the conclusions of the Shimabukuro et al. study to support the use of the mRNA vaccine in early pregnancy, which has now been hastily incorporated into many international guidelines for vaccine use, including in New Zealand,” the researchers said.
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