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Vaccine fertility question?
Hello! I am 30 and several of my female friends around my age are concerned that the COVID vaccine will impact their fertility. I haven’t seen any credible info on this but my friends’ continue to mention ‘reputable sources’. I saw it mentioned on the blog recently that women in their 30s as a group have the highest percentage of people who are anti-vaxxers or hesitant to get the vaccine. I think concerns around fertility may be a key factor in this. Can you please get your journos to look into this and write a fact checker? Thanks!
-MKM
Hi MKM, as a woman nearing that age group myself I definitely understand you and your friends’ concerns. There is also a lot of misinformation out there, and a lot of people who may try to exploit your totally reasonable concerns about a future family.
We have done a couple of fact-checks about pregnancy, fertility and vaccines. This is a comprehensive one from a few weeks ago, written by an infant feeding consultant for the World Health Organisation and an adjunct associate professor in the Western Sydney University School of Nursing and Midwifery.
A few days ago we wrote another fact check piece debunking some prevailing concerns about womens’ fertility and vaccines. These questions below are answered by Archa Fox, a molecular biologist specialising in RNA, the genetic code behind viruses and many of the COVID-19 vaccines, and Christopher Blyth, an associate professor in paediatrics at the University of Western Australia and co-director of the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases. You can’t get much more reputable than those. This is what they said:
Do the vaccines affect fertility?
Dr Fox: There’s no evidence to suggest that the vaccine affects fertility. There is also no scientific reason to suspect that the vaccines might affect fertility. It will be possible within the next year to measure if there is any drop in fertility rates because millions of people around the world have now received the vaccines.
Dr Blyth: No vaccines impact fertility and importantly, that applies to COVID vaccines. It’s absolutely safe for people planning pregnancy.
Is it safe to get the vaccine if I’m pregnant?
Dr Fox: Pregnant people were not included in the phase three clinical trial — that’s very common practice, for pregnant people not to be included in clinical trials of anything. The current advice is if you’re not in a high-risk group, it’s better to wait until we have more research. But that’s only because of an absence of data, it’s not based on any suggestion there is a risk. The data will come soon because all around the world people are getting vaccinated, including pregnant people, and those who want to go on and become pregnant.
Do the vaccines affect breastfeeding?
Dr Blyth: The COVID vaccines are safe for anyone breastfeeding. The recommendation is that you can receive COVID-19 vaccines at any time while breastfeeding.
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