Babies born to fully vaccinated mothers have strong COVID protection: study

Babies born to mothers fully vaccinated against the coronavirus during pregnancy were around 60 per cent less likely to be hospitalized with severe COVID, a new study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

Such an effect had been hypothesized -- because of the transfer of antibodies through the placenta during pregnancy and through breast milk after birth -- but wasn't backed by real-world evidence until now.

The CDC carried out a study involving 379 babies aged up to six months, who were hospitalized in 20 pediatric centres from July 2021 to January 2022.

The authors studied the odds of COVID-19 vaccination among mothers whose babies were hospitalized with the disease (176 infants) compared to the odds of vaccination among mothers whose babies were hospitalized for non-COVID reasons (203 infants), who were a control group.

This is a statistical method used in real-world studies to try to examine patients with similar characteristics, and is often used when it's not possible or ethical to carry out a randomized clinical trial.

"Babies less than six months old whose mothers were vaccinated were 61 per cent less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19,"...