On Friday, April 23, 2021 at a White House virtual press briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky recommended “pregnant people receive the COVID-19 vaccine”, acknowledging pregnant women were excluded from clinical trials. [1]
Three days earlier, April 21, 2021, CDC scientists published [original] preliminary findings from data collected from the “v-safe after vaccination health checker” surveillance system, the v-safe pregnancy registry, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in order “to characterize the initial safety of mRNA COVDI-19 vaccines in pregnant persons”.
Between December 14, 2020, to February 28, 2021, (the first 11 weeks of the U.S.’s vaccination effort) a total of 35,691 v-safe participants 16 to 54 years of age identified as pregnant, of which only 3,958 participants (11%) enrolled in the v-safe pregnancy registry. Of the 827 that had a completed pregnancy “115 (13.9%) were pregnancy losses and 712 (86.1%) were live births (mostly among participants vaccinated in the third trimester)”. “Preliminary findings did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons who received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.” [2]
Adverse neonatal outcomes included preterm birth (in 9.4%) and small size for gestational age (in 3.2%); no neonatal deaths were reported.
Examination of the original CDC paper challenged the findings and revealed an 81.9% chance of miscarriage following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in the first two trimesters when definitions were applied correctly to the data in the paper. 104 spontaneous abortions out of a total of 127 vaccinated under 20 weeks gestation equates to 81.9%. The authors adjusted their paper to correct for their “mistake”, and eliminated this alarming finding. [3, 4]