By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
News last week that the federal government would no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy pregnant individuals sent shock waves through the OB-GYN community and raised concerns among patients. Many medical professionals view the vaccine as critical in protecting pregnant people, their fetuses, and infants during the first six months of life from potentially severe outcomes caused by the virus.
According to both Dr. Linda Eckert, an OB-GYN at UW Medicine, and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pregnancy significantly increases the risk of serious complications from COVID-19. Pregnant individuals are more likely than their nonpregnant peers to become severely ill, require hospitalization or intensive care, or need a ventilator. In the most serious cases, the illness can be fatal.
The CDC also warns that contracting COVID-19 during pregnancy raises the risk of preterm birth, stillbirth, and other complications that can affect both the pregnant person and the baby.
Despite the federal government’s revised guidance, Dr. Eckert and numerous medical organizations—including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and American Society for Reproductive Medicine—continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccination as the best defense against severe illness and death for pregnant individuals and their babies.
“As a person who really wants to advocate and take the best care I can of my patients, as well as set them up to have healthy infants, vaccines in pregnancy can be a really important tool for that,” Eckert said. “Specifically, the COVID vaccine in pregnancy has been shown to provide many benefits for pregnant individuals and for infants 0 to 6 months of age.”
She warned that the change in policy could disrupt long-established systems of evidence-based vaccine approval and create both insurance and accessibility barriers.
“My concern with this recommendation is that it’s going to be confusing for patients and providers,” Eckert said. “It may create access and insurance challenges, and mostly, it’s not based on data. It’s a big change in how vaccine policy has been made. It’s uprooting a decades-long process that’s well established and very thorough—based on evidence—and now it’s not.”
As the administration’s approach to vaccines shifts, concerns are rising among OB-GYNs and healthcare professionals that anti-vaccine messaging from public figures—especially Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—could further complicate patient care.
“I just think this is creating a lot of confusion,” Eckert said. “It’s going to make it harder to take really good care of patients. It’s just going to make everybody’s situation more confusing and more difficult, and I’m really worried that it’ll create equity challenges and access to vaccine challenges.”
Dr. Eckert also raised questions about how insurance companies and pharmacies might respond to the change in federal guidance.
“I can’t speak to what the administration’s reasoning is other than what they put out. I can say that from a provider perspective, our patients need health insurance to pay for vaccines. A lot of them are very expensive,” says Eckert.
“Typically, how insurance companies work is that they follow the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) guidance on what vaccines they’ll pay for,” she continued. “So if the ACIP guidance is changed to say there’s currently no recommendation for use of this vaccine in pregnancy, then I’m worried that insurance companies will not pay for it,” she continued. “And I don’t know—maybe some pharmacists will be reluctant to get it and to give it,” Eckert added. “I don’t really know yet. I mean, we’re in uncharted territory, so it’s too soon to know what this means for access, but it’s hard to imagine it won’t make access harder and things more confusing.”
Eckert emphasized the heightened risks COVID-19 poses to expecting mothers, which underscores the importance of vaccination.
“COVID in pregnancy impacts individuals—if you have a 25-year-old healthy person who’s pregnant versus not pregnant, the impact is much more severe in pregnancy,” she said. “There’s an increased risk of hospitalization, ventilation, and ICU care. There’s also an increased risk of preterm delivery and hypertension in pregnancy. So there are a lot of outcomes that are not good for either the pregnant individual or for the fetus from contracting COVID.”
She also described how vaccination helps newborns by transferring protective antibodies during pregnancy.
“One of the big advantages of immunizing pregnant women is that they make antibodies that they then transfer through the cord to the baby,” Eckert said. “So when the baby’s born, the baby is born with the mother’s antibodies. The higher the level in the mother’s bloodstream, the more antibodies are transferred, and the better protection the infant gets.”
At Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, efforts continue to stress the importance of COVID-19 vaccination for children and pregnant individuals to protect both individual and public health.
The clinic lists several key benefits of COVID-19 vaccination:
• Reduced risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death.
• Contribution to community immunity by helping prevent virus spread.
• Support for safe participation in in-person learning and other activities.
The clinic follows CDC and local health authority guidelines and offers vaccines for children aged 6 months and older. Authorized vaccines undergo rigorous testing for safety and effectiveness. Side effects are generally mild, such as temporary soreness or fever.
To help families navigate the vaccine process, OBCC provides information on access points and encourages parents to speak with their healthcare providers for personalized guidance.
Dr. Shaquita L. Bell, senior medical director at OBCC, reflected on the clinic’s role during the pandemic.
“The greatest benefit was feeling like we were doing something real and tangible to combat COVID and to serve our community,” Bell said. “We know that COVID is disproportionately impacting certain communities and being able to do more to address it felt really good.”
