Pregnant in a pandemic
How dangerous is a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy?
"In principle, pregnant women are more susceptible to all infectious diseases," said Hösemann, who also chairs Saxony's state-level Professional Association of Gynecologists (Landesverbandes des Berufsverbandes der Frauenärzte).
"During pregnancy, a mother's immune system virtually shuts down to stop [the body] rejecting the baby," said Hösemann. Half of the baby's genetic material comes from the father and is essentially foreign to the mother's body, and that may otherwise cause it to be rejected.
In their public statement, 11 professional associations in Germany called for the preferential vaccination of pregnant women because, they say, there is sufficient data to show that a COVID-19 infection is dangerous for both mother and child.