Pharmacy Phriday #5: COVID-19 Vaccine for Pregnant Women

<p><strong>Contributors:</strong> Rachael Duncan, PharmD and Sean McCullough, PharmD</p> <p><strong>Educational Pearls:</strong></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">A 2019 Report by the National Women’s Law Center: Most common occupations for pregnant workers are elementary and middle school teachers, registered nurses, and nursing/psychiatric/home health care aides. </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">This raises the question: Should pregnant women, specifically front-line workers, get the Covid-19 vaccine? </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">According to the FDA, there is currently not enough data to make a conclusion about the safety of the newly approved Pfizer vaccine for populations that include children less than 16, pregnant and lactating women, and those that are immunocompromised. </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Specifically, pregnant women were excluded from the clinical trials testing the Pfizer vaccine. </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">According to the CDC, additional data needs to be reviewed from the phase III clinical trials in order to provide recommendations to pregnant and breast-feeding women about taking the Covid-19 vaccine and its safety. </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">An Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting will take place on 12/13/2020 and will hopefully provide formal recommendations to pregnant and lactating women. </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) has consistently advocated for the inclusion of pregnant and lactating women into clinical trials when these criteria are met: 1) pregnancy poses increased susceptibility to or severity of a disease; 2) the best approach to protect the infant is through passive placental antibody transfer, whi