Officials with the World Health Organization are advising that pregnant women should not get the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine after new research shows that clinical trials of the vaccine were not yet performed on pregnant women.
Officials said pregnant women should only get the Moderna vaccine if they are health care workers or if they have pre-existing medical conditions that put them at a higher risk. So I think there s a lack of data, but many times in times of crisis and medicine, other situations like that, we are forced to make decisions, even when the data is imperfect, said Dr. Diana Racusin, a maternal medicine specialist at UT Health. I wish we had not excluded pregnant women from these trials, but that is the data that we have.
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The World Health Organization is warning pregnant women not to receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine due to a lack of data from initial clinical trials.
This week, the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization issued interim recommendations for use of the Moderna vaccine in people over the age of 18.
Among the guidance was an advisory that only pregnant women who are considered “high risk” to catch the virus, such as healthcare workers, should take the Moderna vaccine.
The WHO gave similar assessments on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine earlier this month, citing insufficient data.
“While pregnancy puts women at a higher risk of severe COVID-19, the use of this vaccine in pregnant women is currently not recommended, unless they are at risk of high exposure,” they wrote.