“Immediate covid vaccine for pregnant women”, doctors appeal to Speranza

Immediately the covid vaccine to pregnant and lactating women. Coronavirus vaccination should be promoted as much as possible even in children over 12 years of age (and younger when dedicated vaccines become available). This is what they are asking, in an appeal addressed to the Ministry of Health and to all institutions, neonatologists, pediatricians and gynecologists, through their scientific societies. Doctors highlight the importance of establishing centralized coordination, as in other European countries, for the vaccination of these categories in order to avoid disparities at local and regional level and to ensure that information on these issues is conveyed in a scientifically valid and with the appropriate specialist expertise. Covid-19 – the experts recall – represents a serious public health problem and, from a clinical medicine point of view, a potentially very serious disease especially for advanced age and some categories of people. However, these characteristics must not and cannot ignore the manifestations of Covid-19 in young women of childbearing age and in neonatal and pediatric age. Although clearly the problem represented by Covid-19 is more serious in other categories of subjects, the excessive dissemination of information often not from official sources and of fake news, which we observe at the moment – they denounce – risks generating a wrong perception of risk and consequences for young women and children. Neonathologists, pediatricians and gynecologists therefore recall the risks highlighted by “several high quality studies in recent months” that Covid-19 can entail for mothers and children. The disease – they underline – can have more serious manifestations in pregnant women than outside pregnancy; pregnancies complicated by Covid-19 result more often in a premature birth which can seriously endanger the life of the baby and generate all the complications typical of prematurity; Sars-CoV-2 can be transmitted, albeit rarely, from mother to fetus and cause rare cases of neonatal Covid-19, even severe; Covid-19 in the pediatric age can have serious consequences not only in the acute phase, but also after weeks such as the multi-systemic inflammatory syndrome (Pims) .It is necessary to understand – the experts continue – that, with the increase in spread of vaccination in other age groups, younger children begin to represent a population that is proportionally more at risk as it is susceptible to Sars-CoV-2 infection, unlike vaccinated people. Vaccines specifically approved for children under the age of 12 are not yet available, but the studies available clearly demonstrate how the antibodies produced in vaccinated mothers pass into fetal blood through the placenta and then into breast milk thus protecting newborns and infants. In some reference centers around the world (such as Paris, Israel, Belgium, Ireland, the USA), vaccination during pregnancy is offered routinely. There are no contraindications to vaccination other than the rest of the population and – they remark – the vaccine does not affect a woman’s fertility, nor is there any reason to postpone a pregnancy. August 4 “The anti-Sars-CoV-2 vaccination is not contraindicated in pregnancy”), as well as by many prestigious international scientific societies. And also the World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated this in a document dated 25 June 2021 The appeal is signed by the Italian Society of Neonatology (Sin), the Italian Society of Pediatrics (Sip), the Italian Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics (Sigo), the Italian Hospital Obstetricians Gynecologists Association (Aogoi), the Gynecologists Association Italian Universities (Agui), the Italian Society of Perinatal Medicine (Simp), the Association of Territorial Gynecologists (Agite) and the European Society of Pediatric and Neo Resuscitation christmas (Espnic).