CDC recommends pregnant women get vaccinated

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., (KRDO)-  Pregnant women who get the COVID-19 vaccine help protect their newborns from the virus after all, according to new information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Data from the CDC now shows infants younger than six months are 61 percent less likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 if their mothers got the vaccine during pregnancy.

One southern Colorado mother shared why she chose to get vaccinated.

"To know that I am protecting this little guy and his sister from anything potentially happening," said Jessica Rogers.

Rogers, a Colorado Springs mother currently pregnant seven months with her second child, is fully vaccinated and boosted, saying the motive behind this is for the safety of her growing family.

"Definitely just having a two-year-old myself and raising her in the middle of a pandemic and learning everything that had to go along with being infected with Coronavirus really kind of had it as a passion of mine," added Rogers, who is also married to KRDO NewsRadio's Program Director.

Researchers studied newborns at 20 pediatric hospitals across 17 states from last July through mid-January. They found that 84 percent of the babies hospitalized with COVID had been born to unvaccinated mothers.

"Pregnant women are at an increased risk for illness, hospitalization, even death and ventilation if they were to contract covid-19, so we want to prevent those complications from occurring," said Dr. Vandna Jerath, an OB-GYN at Optima Women's Healthcare.

 The study included 43 infants admitted to a NICU with COVID, and found that 88 percent of them had mothers who did not get vaccinated before giving birth.

Another revealing discovery in the new data, if the pregnant mother gets the virus, it can attack the placenta, which can lead to stillbirth.