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Pregnant women can decide whether to receive the COVID-19 vaccine; safety monitoring suggests that COVID-19 vaccines don’t pose any specific risk for pregnant women

COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demonstrated a high level of safety and efficacy in clinical trials. However, limited data is available regarding the safety and efficacy of these vaccines in pregnant women because they were excluded from initial clinical trials. Available evidence from animal studies and ongoing vaccine safety monitoring suggests that COVID-19 vaccines don’t pose any specific risk for pregnant women. In contrast, pregnant women have an increased risk of suffering complications from COVID-19, which may affect pregnancy outcomes.

Misleading Wall Street Journal opinion piece makes the unsubstantiated claim that the U.S. will have herd immunity by April 2021

“The article’s claim that the U.S. is near herd immunity rests on two numbers: 1) the detection of infections by testing (claimed to be 10 – 25 percent) and 2) the infection fatality rate (claimed to be 0.23 percent). Using the same number of deaths as the author indicates that 0.15%/0.6% = 25% of the U.S. population has been infected, rather than two-thirds as the author claims. Thus, the author’s argument that 55 – 66 percent of the U.S. population has already been infected and has immunity is not supported by available data.”

More evidence needed for the claim that vitamin D supplements reduce risk of COVID-19 infection

Vitamin D is important for health and may play a role in helping the body to fight infections. While there has been much discussion of the ability of vitamin D to prevent COVID-19, scientific studies so far have produced only limited and conflicting evidence. Taking vitamin D supplements may be useful to prevent a deficiency due to a lack of sunshine, which can be common in people spending a lot of time indoors or living at high latitudes during winter.

The number of new COVID-19 cases fell and daily vaccination increased in early 2021, but no indication that it was due to U.S. president Biden taking office

The daily number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. fell sharply in January 2021. The COVID-19 vaccination campaign has been steadily ramping up since mid-December 2020. These data alone don’t provide evidence that Joe Biden taking office is having an impact, as the reduction in the number of new COVID-19 cases and the increase in the number COVID-19 vaccinations began weeks before Biden’s inauguration. The new presidency, while not expected to have any significant effects in the first weeks following inauguration, might materialize in future months and years.

COVID-19 vaccines don’t increase the incidence of poor outcomes during pregnancy, according to current safety data on COVID-19 vaccines

COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showed a high level of safety and efficacy in clinical trials. However, these trials excluded pregnant women. For this reason, data from clinical trials regarding the vaccines’ safety and efficacy in pregnant women is limited. However, current safety monitoring of pregnant women who received the vaccine hasn’t shown an increased incidence of pregnancy-related adverse events compared to unvaccinated pregnant women. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that “People who are pregnant and part of a group recommended to receive COVID-19 vaccine, such as healthcare personnel, may choose to be vaccinated”.

Misleading to compare the safety of COVID-19 and flu vaccines based solely on VAERS reports; VAERS reports alone cannot demonstrate that a vaccine caused an adverse event

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines demonstrated a high level of safety and efficacy during clinical trials in order to receive emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Extensive post-approval monitoring also indicates that the vaccines are safe. Apart from severe allergic reactions (anaphylaxis), the data so far doesn’t indicate that the vaccines cause severe side effects in the general population. The U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is an important tool for monitoring vaccine safety, but VAERS reports alone don’t demonstrate that a vaccine caused the adverse event. Further investigation of reported deaths found no causal link with COVID-19 vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccines protect individuals from developing the disease and are necessary tools to end the pandemic along with physical distancing measures

Authorized COVID-19 vaccines stimulate COVID-19 immunity in vaccinated individuals and significantly reduce the number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases. Preliminary data indicate that the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use may also reduce the risk of person-to-person transmission of the virus that causes the disease, however, the degree of this effect has not been determined by scientific studies yet. Therefore health authorities recommend that vaccinated people still wear masks to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

COVID-19 vaccines approved for emergency use prevent the disease and are generally safe based on rigorous clinical trials and ongoing monitoring

No vaccine can receive Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unless clinical trials demonstrate that it is safe and can prevent the disease in vaccinated individuals. Data from Phase 3 trials and continued monitoring of vaccinated individuals show that the COVID-19 vaccines approved by the FDA have a high level of efficacy and are generally safe. This evidence indicates that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines in preventing the disease largely outweigh potential risks, such as allergic reactions in a small number of people who have previous histories of allergies.