- Academic Editor
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Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection is associated
with increased perinatal morbidity and mortality. Despite this, vaccination
hesitancy among pregnant women remains to be a huge problem. In this study we
aimed to evaluate COVID-19 vaccination safety and uptake in pregnancy, and to
evaluate adverse perinatal outcomes associated with COVID-19 in pregnancy,
compared with non-infected pregnant women. Methods: This is a
retrospective single-institution cohort study of women who gave birth in 2021.
The primary outcomes of the study were the safety of COVID-19 vaccination during
pregnancy, and the comparison of perinatal outcomes in COVID-19 infected women
during pregnancy group vs non-infected. The secondary outcomes included
vaccine uptake rate, trimester evaluation of vaccination safety, and side
effects. Results: Among 3620 deliveries, 1943 individuals who were
vaccine eligible before delivery were included in the vaccine safety and uptake
analysis. Out of 1943 pregnant women, 212 (10.9%) women received at least one
dose of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine
during pregnancy. 189 (89.2%) of them received BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) and 23
(10.8%) CoronaVac (Sinovac). Following propensity score matching, no significant
increase in emergency cesarean section (C-section) rates, intrapartum complications, stillbirth,
congenital anomalies, maternal or neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions
were found in COVID-19 vaccinated group compared to the non-vaccinated
(p