September 30, 2024 – Pregnant mothers plan and picture their child's first months of life intimately, from buying cute little socks to researching the perfect stroller. But health officials are urging more moms to think about one measure that would help keep their babies out of the hospital during early infancy: getting vaccinated against COVID while pregnant.
Most babies hospitalized for COVID-19 have recent ones from moms who haven’t been vaccinated CDC report says. The worrying data shows that infants are the second commonest age group hospitalized for COVID, after people aged 75 and older. For infants younger than 6 months, COVID hospitalization rates were comparable to those of 65- to 74-year-olds.
Babies should be at the least 6 months old to receive a COVID vaccination, but protection will be transferred to babies of vaccinated moms while pregnant.
The recent evaluation included 1,470 babies under 6 months of age who had COVID-related hospitalizations from October 2022 to April 2024. Nearly 90% of hospitalized babies had moms without documented COVID vaccination while pregnant. Babies whose moms were vaccinated while pregnant tended to be older when hospitalized, typically nearly twice their age. The average age of babies born to unvaccinated moms was 58 days, in comparison with 109 days for babies born to moms who were vaccinated while pregnant.
The study showed that multiple in five babies admitted to hospital were admitted to intensive care and one in 20 babies required help from a respiratory machine, called a ventilator. Just under 1% of babies hospitalized for COVID died.
“Among infants whose mothers had known COVID-19 vaccination status, all died in the hospital from mothers who did not get vaccinated during pregnancy,” the report authors wrote, noting that only about 25% of those pregnant People receiving COVID vaccines.
“These are not necessarily sick, high-risk newborns,” said Dr. Neil Silverman, director of the Infectious Diseases in Pregnancy Program on the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA NPR. “These are full-grown, healthy newborns who happen to get COVID and end up on a ventilator in the hospital.”
Numerous research studies have shown that the COVID vaccination is protected for breastfeeding moms each while pregnant and afterward. Vaccinated moms may also pass on protective antibodies to their babies Breast milk.