COVID-19 vaccines given to pregnant women may help protect their newborns, a case report suggests. Florida doctors described a frontline healthcare worker who received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine three weeks before going into labor. Her healthy baby girl had so-called IgG antibodies to the new coronavirus in her umbilical cord blood. Finding these antibodies in the baby after a single dose of the vaccine suggests "there is potential for protection and infection risk reduction from ... maternal vaccination," the doctors said in a paper posted on Friday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The ideal timing of vaccination during pregnancy is not clear, they said, nor is it clear how well these antibodies will protect the infant, or for how long. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines say that because only limited data are available on the safety of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, "getting vaccinated is a personal choice for people who are pregnant." —Reuters Staff Source
