Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines During Pregnancy: A Short Communication

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 a novel viral infection has taken many lives worldwide in a very short period. The first case of SARS CoV-2 was reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The number of infected cases subsequently increased, leading to a pandemic declaration by WHO in March 2020. Several clinical trials are currently underway to produce effective vaccines to fight against this virus; however, a few of them include pregnant women; leaving us to question the efficacy of the vaccine. Pregnant women are immune-compromised and considered a high-risk group for SARS-CoV-2 and therefore experience maternal and fetal consequences. It seems to be essential to incorporate them in these clinical trials. This study was led to understand the factors preventing pregnant women from participating in such trials and to assess the safety of potential COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy. Methods: This study was conducted using the available literature was done in May 31 2021 by searching databases: PubMed, WHO, clinicaltrials.gov and Google Scholar. Keywords such as COVID-19 Vaccine, COVID Vaccine Clinical Trials, COVID prevention in pregnancy, and their combinations were used. We included patients with a positive COVID-19 test and excluded systematic reviews on COVID-19 negative pregnant patients. The search was comprehensive according to the cross-checking of reference lists from the articles retrieved. Results: Our search results led to 4320 studies after removing duplicates; title and abstract screening were done for 20 studies. We also performed the manual search to look for related articles and 13 studies were included in the final analysis. Conclusion: To enable and ameliorate the participation of pregnant and lactating women for the development of vaccines against COVID-19, we are left with a question pertaining to the short as well as long term prognosis of COVID-19 in pregnant women, their fetus, and also the infants. With such approach we can establish and enable a proper guidance and framework to emphasize the inclusion of pregnant women in the development of future vaccine.