CDC Recommends SIX Vaccines During Pregnancy But Fewer Women are Complying
- by Rishma Parpia
- Published October 22, 2023
- Women
Fewer women in the U.S. are complying with CDC recommendations to get vaccinated during pregnancy according to a report about an Internet panel survey published on Sept. 29, 2023 in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). CDC officials analyzed data from the survey assessing the uptake of influenza, Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis) and COVID-19 vaccines among women pregnant during the 2022–2023 influenza season. They found that more women are resisting recommendations by public health officials and doctors to be injected with multiple vaccines during pregnancy.1
For the past three years, CDC officials have recommended that pregnant women receive five vaccines, including influenza, Tdap and COVID. As of September 2023, that recommendation has been expanded to six vaccines with the addition of a new respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine.2
In September 2023, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) added the RSV vaccine to the CDC’s guidance for pregnant women. The RSV vaccine is to be administered during weeks 32 through 36 of pregnancy.3
Neil Silverman, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UCLA Health in California said:
We are meeting more resistance than I ever remember. We didn’t get this kind of pushback on this scale before the pandemic. Now all vaccines are lumped together as bad.4
Doctors Say More Pregnant Women Hesitant, Don’t Want to Talk About Vaccination
The Internet panel survey to examine vaccine coverage among pregnant women was conducted during the period Mar. 28–April 16, 2023 among women 18–49 years old who reported being pregnant at any time since Aug. 1, 2022 through the date of the survey. Among 17,931 women, who entered the survey site and answered the screening questions, 2,588 were eligible and 2,349 completed the survey.5
Among 1,814 pregnant women during October 2022–January 2023, 47.2 percent reported receiving an influenza vaccine since July 1, 2022, compared to 57.5 percent who got their flu shots during the pre-pandemic 2019-20 season.6 7 Just 55.4 percent of women with a recent live birth received the Tdap vaccine.8
Denise Jamieson, MD, vice president for medical affairs at the University of Iowa Health Care and spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) commented on the number of pregnant women getting the Tdap vaccine saying, “Tdap is just barely recovering from pre-pandemic levels.”9
COVID vaccination coverage was assessed among 1,252 women who were pregnant at the time of the survey and received one of more doses of a primary series and received a bivalent booster dose before or during the current pregnancy. Among 1,252 pregnant women, 64.9 percent reported having received one or more COVID shots; 58.7 percent reported having completed the primary COVID shot series, and 27.3 percent reported having received a bivalent COVID booster shot.10
The number of respondents who reported being very hesitant about receiving influenza and Tdap vaccines during pregnancy increased significantly during 2022–23 compared to 2019–20. During 2022–23, 24.7 percent of women reported being very hesitant about influenza vaccination during pregnancy compared compared to 17.2 percent during 2021–22 and 17.5 percent during 2019–20. During 2022–23, approximately 19.8 percent women reported being very hesitant about Tdap vaccination during pregnancy compared to 14.7 percent during 2021–22 and 15.1 percent during 2019–20.11
Commenting on vaccine hesitancy, Linda Eckert, MD, an obstetrician gynecologist at the University of Washington said, There’s a bias that some patients have, more than they used to, about how they feel about a vaccine.” She said that when she now recommends a vaccine to her patients, they respond with, “I’m not going to talk about it”.12
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