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Many studies comparing the protection of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women have not found an increased threat of stillbirth in vaccinated people. Far from demonstrating a protective risk, vaccination has been shown to reduce a variety of coronavirus-related threats in pregnancy, adding stillbirth.
Despite the protective findings, online posts circulated a “leaked” memo from a hospital in Fresno, California, that falsely suggested that COVID-19 vaccination increases the threat of stillbirth.
“Leaked hospital email reveals explosion of births after COVID vaccine rollout,” reads a headline on the InfoWars conspiracy theory online page, which was shared on Instagram.
The claim appears to stem from an Oct. 24 article in The Epoch Times, a far-right media outlet affiliated with China’s non-secular Falun Gong movement. The site is a source of misinformation, especially about COVID-19 and vaccines.
According to the Epoch Times article, a staff member at a Fresno hospital claimed that the stillbirth rate had “skyrocketed” after the COVID-19 vaccine was implemented. The worker shared an email from a head nurse on Sept. 8 referring to an obvious building that increased the number of “deceased patients” in the hospital system, adding 22 deaths in August, tying the record in July 2021.
But the memo makes no mention of COVID-19 vaccination and its main goal is to teach nurses how to take good care of death samples. Also, the email never states that your figures are only for stillbirths.
Stillbirth, or stillbirth, refers to death at any time during pregnancy. Deaths before 20 weeks’ gestation are miscarriages, while deaths after 20 weeks (or, infrequently, 28 weeks) are considered stillbirths. Confusing stillbirth with stillbirth wrongly exaggerates the number of stillbirths.
Public fitness departments in Fresno County and California also told us that there has been a significant increase in stillbirth rates since COVID-19 vaccines were introduced.
Citing Dr. James Thorp, a Florida gynecologist who in the past spread incorrect information about COVID-19 vaccines, The Epoch Times later incorrectly claimed that the memo was “consistent” with other vaccine protective surveillance knowledge apparently vaccines are harmful to pregnancy.
This is incorrect. The memorandum does not involve COVID-19 vaccines, nor does existing evidence recommend that vaccination is harmful to pregnant women and their fetuses. Conversely, vaccination can oppose COVID-19, which can be harmful to pregnant women and build up the threat of pregnancy complications, adding stillbirths.
According to an online explainer updated through Victoria Male, Senior Lecturer in Reproductive Immunology at Imperial College London, 16 studies assessed the protection of COVID-19 vaccination from stillbirth, and none found an increased threat of stillbirth after COVID-19 vaccination.
A meta-analysis that examined some of those studies, the explainer notes, “found that COVID vaccination reduces the threat of stillbirth,” most likely because of the threat posed by coronavirus infection. The meta-analysis, published in Nature Communications in May, found that “the threat of fetal death was particularly reduced by 15% in the vaccinated cohort. “
Dr. Brenna Hughes, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Duke University Health System who has studied pregnancy with COVID-19, also referred us to a study published this month in the American Journal of Obstetrics.
Many studies have shown that pregnant women who are inflamed with the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, have a higher risk of stillbirth and other poor outcomes for mother and baby than those who are not inflamed.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of more than 1. 2 million hospitalizations per delivery between March 2020 and September 2021, for example, found that American women with COVID-19 had nearly twice the risk of stillbirth compared to those without COVID-19. The threat is more than 4 times higher when the delta variant is dominant.
A meta-analysis of 111 studies, including more than 42,000 pregnant women, found that COVID-19 particularly increases the risk of preterm birth, preeclampsia, neonatal death, maternal death, and stillbirth. The risk of stillbirth among other people with COVID-19 nearly 2. 4 times higher than among women without COVID-19.
Research suggests that in women with COVID-19, it is infection of the placenta, or what’s known as SARS-CoV-2 placentitis, that increases the threat of stillbirth. The placenta is a transient organ that develops pregnancy and supplies nutrients and oxygen. to the fetus, among other functions.
It’s rare, though, as explained in a review published in October in the American Journal of Obstetrics.
Unlike many facets of COVID-19, there appears to be a link between COVID-19 severity and stillbirth. Some reported cases of stillbirth with SARS-CoV-2 placentitis have even occurred in asymptomatic pregnant women.
Even so, none of the cases of fetal death from SARS-CoV-2 described in the literature were in vaccinated mothers.
“It seems beyond coincidence that in multiple reports of SARS-CoV-2 placentitis related to stillbirths and neonatal deaths, none of the mothers won COVID-19 vaccines,” the review notes. “In addition, there is no evidence, the authors are not personally aware, through collegiate networks, or in the published literature of any case of SARS-CoV-2 placentitis causing stillbirths in pregnant women who won the COVID-19 vaccine. “
The review authors suspect that vaccination protects against stillbirth by preventing SARS-CoV-2 from entering the bloodstream, which is likely how the virus reaches the placenta.
In keeping with the concept that vaccination is effective in reducing the threat of COVID-19-related stillbirths, initial knowledge of the v-safe COVID-19 pregnancy registry submitted to the CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Committee last month found that pregnant women who were fully vaccinated and the coronavirus did not have a higher risk of stillbirth than their peers who were not infected.
To be clear, the chances of a pregnant user having a stillbirth, even if they are inflamed with the coronavirus, are still quite low. According to the CDC, there are about 1 in 175 stillbirths, which would mean less than 0. 6 percent occurs. of time. Doubling or tripling this threat would mean that the threat would be less than 2%.
But if you’re worried about stillbirth, not to mention all the other maternal and fetal COVID-19 headaches, evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccination would be a smart idea, not a bad one, as online posts suggest.
Beyond the overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 vaccination does not cause stillbirths, the main points about the alleged accumulation of stillbirths in Fresno are also unloaded.
We reached out to several maternity hospitals in the city and were able to identify the formula of the culprit hospital from the story it shared with The Epoch Times as network medical centers.
In a statement, the hospital said the email about the hospital’s policy did not include any reference to COVID-19 vaccination, and was not limited to stillbirths.
“There are a number of reasons for stillbirth and it may remain unexplained in some cases,” said Sarah Putman, director of physical fitness for women and newborns at Regional Community Medical Center. “This was an internal memo from a clinical staff member to other unit members reminding them to adhere to hospital policy and thanking them for the time and care they provided to patients. The author of the note did not make public about all the pregnancy losses in the note, which was secondary to the strengthening of the hospital’s policies and procedures. with the staff. There was no mention through this staff member of a cause for this set and no COVID-19 or vaccinations were mentioned.
The particular email mentions “deceased patients” who died before 20 weeks, which would be miscarriages and not stillbirths. It was time in a single hospital formula: it is incorrect to calculate a fetal death rate from the number, as the doctor quoted in The Epoch Times article did.
Scientists have much greater and more powerful knowledge to assess whether vaccination increases the threat of stillbirth, and it is transparent that this is the case.
The claim is also based on the concept that there has been an accumulation of stillbirths over the past two years. While it’s conceivable, this is the case with the hospital’s formula for singles: Male, of Imperial College London, said it may be due to several reasons, such as an outbreak of certain infectious diseases, changes in prenatal care or coincidence, there is no indication of any kind of widespread increase in stillbirths in the region.
The California Department of Public Health told us that, as of November 2022, “there has been no significant increase in stillbirth rates in California since the advent of COVID-19 vaccines, and no stillbirth certificate has discussed ‘COVID-19 vaccination. ‘””
An epidemiologist with the Fresno County Department of Public Health told us this is also the case for Fresno, adding that the branch has a fetal and infant mortality review team, which has looked at vaccine fears.
With COVID-19 increasing the threat of stillbirth, it is moderate to assume that there may have been an increase in stillbirth rates over the past two years. 5. 74 deaths consistent with 1,000 births was not particularly different from the rate of 5. 70 in 2019. This fact was discussed through Thorp in the Epoch Times article, he chose a comparison with 2018, where the rate was slightly higher.
Time will tell what national statistics will look like: The CDC told us that 2021 data will be released in the summer of 2023, according to the same timeline above, but whatever the stillbirth rate, it probably doesn’t mean COVID-19 is rarely much of a threat to pregnant women.
Male explained that since stillbirth is quite rare, it’s possible that more stillbirths due to COVID-19 won’t have as big an effect on national numbers. He told us, for example, that in the UK there were only 77 stillbirths from COVID-19 up to October 2021, which wasn’t much compared to the annual baseline of around 2500. And because the stillbirth rate in the U. S. is not a majorAmerica.
Again, the evidence is already transparent that COVID-19 increases the threat of stillbirth and vaccination can make that threat.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s vaccination/COVID-19 task is made imaginable thanks to a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Foundation has no control over FactCheck. org’s editorial decisions, and the perspectives expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the Foundation’s perspectives. The goal of the task is to increase exposure to accurate data on COVID-19 and vaccines, while reducing the effect of erroneous data.
Q: Are vaccinated and vaccinated people more likely to become inflamed or have the omicron variant than unvaccinated people?
R. Non. Se vaccinating increases your coverage against COVID-19. Sometimes some undeveloped knowledge would recommend otherwise, but this data cannot be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a vaccine.