When Christopher Morosky began his practice more than 15 years ago, fewer pregnant people were declining vaccinations.
Morosky, who is an OB-GYN at UConn Health and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UConn School of Medicine, said he’s spending a lot of time these days reassuring pregnant patients that vaccines are safe and necessary.
“I do see a lot more concern around those medical interventions, and parents choosing to decline them,” Morosky said.
“If you were to say it's a 10 to 20% increase in declining erythromycin [antibacterial eye ointment], Vitamin K shots, and hepatitis B vaccine — I think that that is a pretty accurate estimate,” he said.
Federal messaging surrounding vaccines and misinformation on social media are two main reasons why his pregnant patients are afraid, Morosky said.
But doctors across the country are working to counter the misinformation.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) launched a campaign this summer to promote facts about immunizations and science “in an effort to combat the spread of misinformation by anti-vaccine activists,” according to the AAP.
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases also kicked off this year’s respiratory illness season by urging pregnant people to vaccinate themselves against the flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
At Dr. Kate Pascucci’s OB-GYN practice in West Hartford, patients with vaccine hesitancy worry over vaccinating themselves against the flu, RSV and DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis).
“It's concerning that they are not getting those vaccines because the baby then is at risk for viruses that would be annoying to an adult, but that could be fatal for a newborn,” she said.
Pascucci said she began to see vaccine hesitancy emerge during the COVID-19 pandemic years, and that fear has stayed on.
Earlier this year, the federal health department headed by Robert F Kennedy Jr. decided to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for pregnant people. But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opposes that decision.
“The data remain clear – getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is still the best way for pregnant people to protect themselves and their pregnancies,” Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, president of ACOG, said in a statement. “It is alarming that HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] is propagating misinformation.”
