Spontaneous Abortions and Policies on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Use During Pregnancy

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Spontaneous Abortions and Policies on COVID-19
mRNA Vaccine Use During Pregnancy

IPAK PHPI  -  Aleisha R. Brock, Simon Thornley

Abstract


The use of mRNA vaccines in pregnancy is now generally considered safe for protection against
COVID-19 in countries such as New Zealand, USA, and Australia. However, the influential CDCsponsored
article by Shimabukuro et al. (2021) used to support this idea, on closer inspection, provides
little assurance, particularly for those exposed in early pregnancy. The study presents falsely reassuring
statistics related to the risk of spontaneous abortion in early pregnancy, since the majority of women in
the calculation were exposed to the mRNA product after the outcome period was defined (20 weeks’
gestation).

In this article, we draw attention to these errors and recalculate the risk of this outcome based on the
cohort that was exposed to the vaccine before 20 weeks’ gestation. Our re-analysis indicates a
cumulative incidence of spontaneous abortion 7 to 8 times higher than the original authors’ results
(p < 0.001) and the typical average for pregnancy loss during this time period. In light of these findings,
key policy decisions have been made using unreliable and questionable data. We conclude that the
claims made using these data on the safety of exposure of women in early pregnancy to mRNA-based
vaccines to prevent COVID-19 are unwarranted and recommend that those policy decisions be
revisited.  .  .

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