COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy: recommendations of the National Technical Expert Group on Immunoprophylaxis

Can pregnant women be vaccinated against COVID-19? They may have a harder time carrying COVID-19. At the same time, pregnant women did not participate in clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines. However, the available anti-COVID vaccines do not contain a live microorganism and no negative effects on the course of pregnancy were found in animal studies. The study of their safety for pregnant women continues.

Therefore, the national expert group on immunoprophylaxis recommends that if a pregnant woman has a high risk of developing COVID-19, for example, a woman works in a COVID hospital and/or has concomitant diseases, she can discuss the possibility of vaccination with a doctor.

If, according to the doctor, the benefits of vaccination exceed the potential risks from it, then it is recommended to vaccinate a woman with an mRNA vaccine (in Ukraine, only one such vaccine is still used, Comirnaty of Pfizer-BioNTech).

If a pregnant woman received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on a vector platform (in Ukraine, only AstraZeneca (Covishield, SKBio) is registered) before or during pregnancy, then the doctor should tell her about the ratio of risks and benefits from the second vaccination. Based on this, the woman will decide for herself whether to receive a second dose of the same vaccine during pregnancy or after childbirth.

You don't need to do a routine pregnancy test before getting vaccinated. Women who breastfeed their babies can be vaccinated with Comirnaty/Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca (Covishield, SKBio) vaccines without reservations.

The instructions of the CoronaVac vaccine from Sinovac Biotech, which is also used in Ukraine, prohibit vaccinating pregnant women and women who breastfeed with it.