Pregnant & Breastfeeding Women Who Get the COVID-19 Vaccine Are Protecting Their Infants, Research Suggests

Pregnant & Breastfeeding Women Who Get the COVID-19 Vaccine Are Protecting Their Infants, Research Suggests

Becky Cummings, who got vaccinated in December, snuggles her newborn, Clark, while he takes a nap.

Photo credit: Rachel Walter

Becky Cummings had multiple reasons to get vaccinated against COVID-19 while tending to her firstborn, Clark, who arrived in September 2020 at 27 weeks.

The 29-year-old intensive care unit nurse in Greensboro, North Carolina, had witnessed the devastation day in and day out as the virus took its toll on the young and old. But when she was offered the vaccine, she hesitated, skeptical of its rapid emergency use authorization.

Exclusion of pregnant and lactating mothers from clinical trials fueled her concerns. Ultimately, though, she concluded the benefits of vaccination outweighed the risks of contracting the potentially deadly virus.

"Long story short," Cummings says, in December "I got vaccinated to protect myself, my family, my patients, and the general public."

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Susan Kreimer
Susan Kreimer is a New York-based freelance journalist who has followed the landscape of health care since the late 1990s, initially as a staff reporter for major daily newspapers. She writes about breakthrough studies, personal health, and the business of clinical practice. Raised in the Chicago area, she holds a B.A. in Journalism/Mass Communication and French, with minors in German and Russian, from the University of Iowa and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Eight Big Medical and Science Trends to Watch in 2021

Promising developments underway include advancements in gene and cell therapy, better testing for COVID, and a renewed focus on climate change.

Antonio diCaterina/Unsplash

The world as we know it has forever changed. With a greater focus on science and technology than before, experts in the biotech and life sciences spaces are grappling with what comes next as SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 illness, has spread and mutated across the world.

Even with vaccines being distributed, so much still remains unknown.

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Dawn Reiss
Dawn Reiss is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for more than 40 outlets including TIME, The New York Times, Civil Eats, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Fortune.com, USA Today and Reuters. You can find her at DawnReiss.com or @DawnReiss on Instagram and Twitter.
Vaccines Are the Safest Medical Procedure We Have. Make Your Wager Wisely.

Frontline infectious disease physician Amesh Adalja received his COVID-19 vaccine on December 18th, 2020 in Butler, PA.

Courtesy of Adalja

In the late 1650's the French polymath and renowned scientist Blaise Pascal, having undergone a religious experience that transformed him into something of a zealot, suggested the following logical strategy regarding belief in God: If there is a God, then believing in him will ensure you an eternity of bliss, while not believing in him could earn you an eternal sentence to misery.

On the other hand, if there is no God, believing in him anyway will cost you very little, and not believing in him will mean nothing in the non-existent after life. Therefore, the only sensible bet is to believe in God. This has come to be known as Pascal's wager.

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Stuart Firestein
Stuart Firestein is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Ignorance and How it Drives Science (2012) and Failure: Why Science Is So Successful (2014), both from Oxford University Press.