Covid-19: infertility, stillbirth in the United States, misinformation about vaccines has made children vulnerable to the Omicron variant

Fear that serums have been developed too quickly, rumors about an impact of injections on fertility... Wassim Ballan, doctor at Phoenix Children's Hospital, assures us that fighting misinformation is now part of his job. “Unfortunately, most of the time when we talk to a family about these things, the child is already in the hospital,” he laments.

Parents need to understand that vaccines are "the most important tool to protect themselves," he says, especially to prevent severe forms of the disease, such as childhood multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS- C), a rare and dangerous complication that does not occur until several weeks after infection.

27% of children have received at least one dose

Only 27% of children aged 5 to 11 have received a first dose of vaccine in the United States, while pediatric hospitalizations have reached a record high of 914 per day in January, a dramatic rise from the previous peak of 342 in September 2021.

Infants are too young to receive the vaccine, but Kathryn Gray, a doctor at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, says a growing body of research indicates that vaccination during pregnancy leads to transmission of antibodies to babies , giving them temporary protection. However, many pregnant women are hesitant to get immunized because they were excluded from initial clinical trials.

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Dr. Gray is one of the professionals monitoring the situation. "So far, there have been no red flags" in the data, she says, adding that she "confidently" assures her patients that getting vaccinated during pregnancy is safe for both mother and child. Babe.

Health authorities around the world are saying the same thing, but the initial lack of data continues to be exploited by vaccine opponents on social media. Posts on Facebook and Twitter claim that cases of stillbirths have spiked since pregnant women got vaccinated, although lack of protection against the virus is a far greater risk.

According to epidemiologists Carla DeSisto and Sascha Ellington of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of the 1.2 million births in the United States, the data did not suggest "evidence that the stillbirth rate has been higher during the pandemic.” Their work, however, revealed the risks for a pregnant woman to contract Covid-19. "Compared to pregnant people without Covid-19, pregnant people with Covid are more likely to develop a pregnancy with a dangerous outcome, including premature births or stillborn babies", underline the researchers.

"Unvaccinated milk"

Breastfeeding has also been the target of misinformation, with posts alleging babies developed rashes or died after being fed by a mother vaccinated. The perinatology Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine has however recommended vaccination for breastfeeding people and indicates that there is no reason to stop breastfeeding after having been vaccinated.

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Fake news proliferates in private Facebook groups where parents trade and sell breast milk, moderators say. On the page of one of these groups which has more than 10,500 subscribers, a New York mother, Bethany Bristow, spotted requests for "unvaccinated milk". Along with other moderators, she decided to ban such requests.

On the contrary, studies have shown that milk from vaccinated mothers has certain benefits, according to Laura Ward, co-director of the Center for Medical Breastfeeding at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. "Antibodies have been detected in the breast milk of vaccinated breastfeeding women. This means that breastfed infants may have some protection against Covid-19 if their mother has received the vaccine," she notes. "Concerns or gray areas about vaccines are overshadowed by the risks incurred by Covid," adds Dr. Kathryn Gray.