Today we bring you the 5th episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every 2 weeks, Scientific American‘s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential advancements in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variations and whatever in between.
Tanya Lewis: Hi, and welcome to COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series!
Josh Fischman: This is your fast-track update on the COVID pandemic.
Lewis: I’m Tanya Lewis.
Fischman: I’m Josh Fischman.
Lewis: And we’re Scientific American‘s senior health editors. Today we’ll speak about why COVID vaccines appear safe for pregnancy …
Fischman: And the rarity of blood clots with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine …
Lewis: And the very first strong information revealing that COVID still injures many individuals months after they first got sick.
Parents-to-be have worried about the security of COVID vaccines for pregnancy. Josh, this week there’s some peace of mind?
A research study of about 35,000 pregnant ladies, done from December 2020 through February of this year, found they reported no additional issues.
A little group of these ladies, just over 800 of them, completed their pregnancies during the research study.
Now there are some limitations to this research study, which came out this week in the New England Journal of Medicine Still, before this, we really didn’t understand anything about the security of these vaccines in pregnancy.
Last week U.S. health firms advised a “time out” on use of the J&J vaccine since of a number of extremely rare reports of blood clots. What’s happening with that?
Lewis: Well, just 6 people had this condition out of about seven million, so the threat of it occurring is incredibly rare, but the CDC and FDA decided to pause vaccinations “out of an abundance of care.”
It looks like a condition understood as heparin-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, which happens occasionally with the blood-thinner heparin.
Another vaccine, made by AstraZeneca, had actually been connected to this rare blood clotting condition in an extremely little number of individuals in Europe, leading to a comparable pause there.
Both vaccines are made with adenoviruses, so it’s possible there is a similar mechanism at play. But researchers have cautioned that the risk of these clots is still exceptionally low, specifically compared to the risk from COVID.
Fischman: Is holding back going to increase vaccine hesitancy among some people?
Other researchers state this is precisely how the system is expected to work– that by taking these unusual events seriously, the CDC and FDA are cultivating more trust with Americans.
The signs of blood clots are things like an incredibly persistent headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within one-to-two weeks of vaccination.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines haven’t been connected to clots.
For the past year we have actually heard a couple of stories about “long haulers,” people having a hard time months after their preliminary bout of COVID. This week, we got some strong proof revealing just how serious this is?
Fischman: We have information drawn from more than 70,000 COVID patients, followed for 6 months after their preliminary illness. Some of these individuals remain actually ill.
The patients were all in the Veterans Administration health system, so they have detailed records. Compared with non-COVID clients, they had a 59 percent higher threat of death during those 6 months.
And here’s a striking contrast. And COVID clients were more likely to die throughout that half-year– about 50 percent more most likely.
Lewis: Now you depend on speed. Thanks for joining us.
Fischman: Return in 2 weeks for the next episode of COVID, Rapidly! And take a look at SciAm.com for upgraded and in-depth COVID news.
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR( S)
Josh Fischman is a senior editor at Scientific American who covers medication, biology and science policy. He has written and modified about science and health for Discover, Science, Earth, and U.S. News & World Report.
Tanya Lewis is a senior editor at Scientific American who covers health and medicine.
Credit: Nick Higgins
Jeffery DelViscio is senior multimedia editor in charge of video and podcasts at Scientific American
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