US CDC urges pregnant women to get COVID-19 vaccine

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bolstered its call Wednesday for pregnant women to get vaccinated for the coronavirus.

"CDC encourages all pregnant people or people who are thinking about becoming pregnant and those breastfeeding to get vaccinated," said Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. "It has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible Delta variant."

The CDC has been recommending pregnant women to get vaccinated since April as a way to protect themselves and their babies against the virus, and previous research showed no safety concerns for those who get the vaccine while late in pregnancy.

But new research confirms those beliefs. The CDC said in a study of nearly 2,500 pregnant women who got the vaccine, the miscarriage rate was around 13%. That is on par with the 11% to 16% of miscarriages in the general population.

The CDC noted that vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women, combined with severe illness and pregnancy complications related to the more contagious delta variant, makes vaccinations for pregnant women "more urgent than ever."

The latest CDC findings show 85% of the US' new infections come from the delta variant.

Mark Turrentine, an obstetrics professor at Texas Baylor University, told National Public Radio that there has been a jump in unvaccinated pregnant women coming into Texas hospitals with the delta variant. And they, too, have symptoms that are worse than the conventional COVID-19 virus.

It is not clear why pregnant women are especially vulnerable to the worst symptoms of COVID-19, but "I have seen some pregnant women get really sick," said Turrentine. "I mean, I have seen some die."