Turkish gynecologist urges pregnant women to get COVID jab

By Hatice Senses Kurukiz

ISTANBUL (AA) - Pregnant women are more susceptible to infection with COVID-19 compared to previous periods, according to an expert.

The reason behind the increase in the coronavirus infection rate among pregnant women is a fear of coronavirus vaccines caused by “false beliefs” that they may cause side effects or be harmful to the mother or the baby, Turkish obstetrician and gynecologist Faruk Buyru said in a statement.

Unvaccinated pregnant women can experience more severe illness from COVID-19 because of decreased immunity and lung capacity stemming from pregnancy, according to Buyru.

"The difference in the omicron (variant) from the previous COVID-19 strains is that it can be transmitted extremely easily after brief contact with a sick person,” he said.

This variant causes less severe disease than the others that have come before it thanks to the protective effect of the vaccines developed against the coronavirus, he added.

Buyru noted that it seems to cause much milder disease in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated ones.

He said that among the hospitalized cases worldwide, most of them were unvaccinated or only partly vaccinated, and this also applies to pregnant women.

Pregnant women who are fully vaccinated acquire adequate protection against the virus, and they either do not get sick or can survive the disease in the form of an extremely mild upper respiratory tract infection, Buyru added.

*Writing by Zehra Nur Duz