logo
No link between COVID vaccines and infection during pregnancy and developmental delays in toddlers

No link between COVID vaccines and infection during pregnancy and developmental delays in toddlers

Euronews19-02-2025

Women who got COVID-19 or were vaccinated during pregnancy do not have a higher risk of having children with developmental problems, according to a major new study from Scotland.
Previous research in Switzerland and the United States offered some reassurance, but the new study, published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal on Wednesday, is the largest analysis to date to confirm the safety of the vaccine for pregnant women and their babies.
The study included nearly 25,000 babies born in Scotland in 2020 and 2021.
Health workers visited the families' homes for routine checks when the babies were 13 to 15 months old, monitoring any concerns with speech, language skills, thinking, emotional development, and physical movement.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh then tracked their mothers' health histories – and found no link between COVID-19 infection or vaccination during pregnancy and child development issues.
The findings held up regardless of which trimester the mothers were vaccinated or infected.
The researchers said the results should bolster parents' confidence in the safety of the jabs, especially given that early COVID-19 vaccine trials excluded pregnant women.
'Vaccination safety is something that has been called into question quite a lot recently,' Bonnie Auyeung, the study's senior author and a reader in child health at the University of Edinburgh, told Euronews Health.
'Hopefully these early findings will support parents and their decisions around whether or not to take the vaccine, and for those who do take it, it does appear that it is safe for the developing child'.
Developmental issues more evident in older children
According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which regulates drugs and vaccines in the European Union, COVID-19 vaccines do not raise the risk of pregnancy complications, miscarriage, premature birth, or health issues for babies.
Notably, women who get COVID-19 during pregnancy are more likely to fall seriously ill, especially in the second and third trimesters, the agency says.
The study authors noted that developmental concerns aren't always noticed until children are older.
They said they plan to follow the same families in the coming years to track whether a link emerges. However, for now, the findings should help bolster guidance from doctors and other medical professionals that the vaccine is safe for pregnant women and their babies.
'Clinical guidance is still quite mixed,' Auyeung said, but 'it does appear that vaccination during pregnancy doesn't actually lead to any developmental problems'.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Australian murder suspect says lethal lunch may have contained 'foraged' mushrooms
Australian murder suspect says lethal lunch may have contained 'foraged' mushrooms

France 24

time5 days ago

  • France 24

Australian murder suspect says lethal lunch may have contained 'foraged' mushrooms

Erin Patterson is charged with murdering her estranged husband's parents and aunt in 2023 by spiking their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. She is also accused of attempting to murder a fourth guest -- her husband's uncle -- who survived after a long stay in hospital. Patterson maintains the lunch was poisoned by accident, pleading not guilty to all charges in a case that continues to grip Australia. The 50-year-old choked up with emotion as she gave her account of the meal on Wednesday. She said she decided to improve the beef-and-pastry dish with dried mushrooms after deciding it tasted a "little bland". While she initially believed a kitchen container held store-bought mushrooms, she said it may have been mixed with foraged fungi. "I decided to put in the dried mushrooms I brought from the grocer," she told the court. "Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well." Patterson earlier told the court how she had started foraging for mushrooms during a Covid lockdown in 2020. She also told the court on Wednesday that she had misled her guests about the purpose of the family meal. While they ate, Patterson revealed she might be receiving treatment for cancer in the coming weeks. But this was a lie, Patterson said. 'Shouldn't have lied' "I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery, so I remember thinking I didn't want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. "I was really embarrassed about it. "So letting them believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment might mean they could help me with the logistics around the kids," she told the court. "I shouldn't have lied to them," she added. The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests and took care that she did not consume the deadly mushrooms herself. Her defence says Patterson ate the same meal as the others but did not fall as sick. Patterson asked her estranged husband Simon to the family lunch at her secluded rural Victoria home in July 2023. Simon turned down the invitation because he felt too uncomfortable, the court has heard previously. The pair were long estranged but still legally married. Simon's parents Don and Gail were happy to attend, dying days after eating the home-cooked meal. Simon's aunt Heather Wilkinson also died, while her husband Ian fell seriously ill but later recovered. The trial is expected to last another week. © 2025 AFP

Bill Gates' trip to Singapore falsely linked to 'vaccine mandate' claims
Bill Gates' trip to Singapore falsely linked to 'vaccine mandate' claims

AFP

time5 days ago

  • AFP

Bill Gates' trip to Singapore falsely linked to 'vaccine mandate' claims

"Singapore passes law to mandate vaccines and jail the unvaccinated -- days after Bill Gates' high-level visit," reads a May 12 post by an Australia-based Facebook page with more than 9,000 followers. The post links to an article with the same headline on "The People's Voice", a dubious website which AFP has repeatedly fact-checked for amplifying Covid-19 misinformation. The site has also previously claimed Gates and the World Health Organization (WHO) were "forcing vaccination", which AFP has debunked here. "Just as Bill Gates and the WHO's Tedros Ghebreyesus wrapped up high-profile visits with the nation's top leaders, sweeping changes were quietly pushed through the country's legal system—changes that now make it a crime to refuse mandatory government vaccines," reads the article, calling the timing "impossible to ignore". Image Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on May 29, 2025 Other posts claiming Singapore would mandate vaccines also appeared on X, Facebook and TikTok. But Singapore's Ministry of Health told AFP the claims are false. "Singapore has not passed any laws on vaccinations after Mr Gates' recent visit to Singapore," the ministry said in an emailed statement on June 3. re on May 5 to announce his philanthropic Gates Foundation would be opening an office in the country (archived link). The Straits Times and Forbes also reported the announcement (archived here and here). Low likelihood of vaccine mandate A number of the false posts referenced Sections 47, 65, and 67 of Singapore's Infectious Disease Law (archived link). The provisions state that the director-general of health may direct "any person or class of persons not protected or vaccinated against the disease to undergo vaccination" when "an outbreak of an infectious disease... is imminent" and "it is necessary or expedient to do so for the securing public safety". "The authorities must show these two requirements are satisfied before they can impose any vaccine mandate," Eugene Tan, an associate professor of law at Singapore Management University, told AFP on May 29 (archived link). Penalties for failing to be vaccinated under the amendments would include a fine of up to 10,000 Singapore dollars (around US$7,760) and a prison term of up to six month for the first offence, while a second offence would see the punishment doubled. Tan said the penalties, however, would only apply when a vaccine mandate is in place, though the "likelihood of such a scenario is very low". He added that the statutes within the law make a blanket vaccine mandate "highly exceptional because they are severely intrusive and people cannot be compelled to be vaccinated". More of AFP's reporting on health misinformation is available here.

Hospitals try to waste less laughing gas in bid to curb climate impact
Hospitals try to waste less laughing gas in bid to curb climate impact

Euronews

time6 days ago

  • Euronews

Hospitals try to waste less laughing gas in bid to curb climate impact

An Irish hospital is trying to prevent unused laughing gas from escaping into the atmosphere, in a bid to curb waste and go green in healthcare. Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, has long been used to relieve pain and relax patients ahead of surgery – but outdated hospital infrastructure means much of the anaesthetic gas is actually wasted and released into the atmosphere, where it remains for around 120 years. That's prompted concerns among health experts across Europe, who say leaks and other efficiency problems are worsening the environmental impact of a sector that is already among the heaviest polluters worldwide. This is 'the most important issue for us to look at by quite some distance,' Dr Paul Southall, sustainability lead for the UK's Royal College of Anaesthetists, told Euronews Health. Now, St John's Hospital in Limerick has become one of the first hospitals in Ireland to stop using nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic on a large scale after deactivating the extensive network of pipes that fed the gas directly to the hospital's operating rooms. 'Nitrous oxide is safe to use, but the infrastructure used to deliver it inevitably results in waste,' said Dr Hugh O'Callaghan, a consultant anaesthetist involved with the St John's project. In a statement, he added that modern methods to deliver anaesthesia are making laughing gas increasingly 'obsolete'. St John's will now rely on mobile equipment to bring anaesthetic cylinders directly into the operating room, according to Ireland's health services agency. Other Irish hospitals in the region are expected to follow suit in the coming months as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions from anaesthetic gases by 50 per cent by 2030, the agency said. Other European hospitals are also phasing out piped-in methods of delivering laughing gas, including those in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In the UK, for example, two hospitals replaced their large centralised nitrous oxide containers with small portable cylinders that could be wheeled into the operating room. This led to a 55 per cent reduction in monthly nitrous oxide emissions, from 333 tonnes to 150 tonnes, according to the National Health Service (NHS) in England. 'It's not about restricting clinical use, it's about creating a less wasteful system,' said Dr Cliff Shelton, a UK-based anaesthetist, professor, and co-chair of the safety, standards, and environmental sustainability committee at the Association of Anaesthetists, a professional group focused on the UK and Ireland. Last year, the group said UK and Irish hospitals should decommission their nitrous oxide pipelines 'as soon as possible,' ideally by 2027. In recent years, the health trust in Manchester, where Shelton works, has switched to a mobile-canister approach for nitrous oxide that he said has reduced the organisation's overall carbon footprint by about three per cent to five per cent. 'We've made it cheaper and greener, and people are still getting the same [anaesthetic] care they always got,' he told Euronews Health. These efforts are part of a broader reckoning among medical workers about how their field is exacerbating climate change, which is linked to a host of health issues, such as asthma, stroke, and mosquito-borne diseases. Globally, the health sector causes 4.4 per cent of net emissions, with the European Union contributing 248 million metric tons of carbon dioxide – behind only the United States and China, according to a 2019 report from the advocacy group Health Care Without Harm. When used as anaesthesia, laughing gas adds an additional one per cent to the EU health sector's carbon footprint, the group found. Other commonly used anaesthetic gases, such as sevoflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane, also contribute. But the vast majority of the health sector's carbon emissions are related to its supply chain – the production, transport, use, and disposal of medicines, medical kits, and other resources. That means minimising waste of nitrous oxide and other gas-based anaesthetics won't be enough for hospitals to offset their climate impact. Even so, sustainability-minded doctors believe it is a good start. 'When we looked into this, we found we were buying 100 times more nitrous oxide than we were actually using,' Shelton said. 'It's a moral imperative, really, to get on top of that [degree of waste],' he added. Organ transplantation, which is often the only way to save a life, is directly dependent on donors. But their sometimes unreliable availability often leads to patients dying before receiving a donated organ. There are two types of organ donations: from a living donor and cadaveric transplants. While options for a living donor are generally restricted to just the kidney and liver, in Kazakhstan it tends to save more lives than a posthumous donation. "Around the world, 80-90% of donations are posthumous, but the same cannot be said about Kazakhstan and the countries in Central Asia. In our country, 80-90% of donors are living relatives of the patients," said Aidar Sitkazinov, Director of the Republican Centre for Coordination of Transplantation and High-Tech Services in Kazakhstan. According to him, the reason many people refuse to donate their organs after death is a lack of trust in the healthcare system. The belief that corruption is everywhere makes them fear that donated organs will be misused or illegally sold, or that doctors will not treat the patients to get to their organs. Sitkazinov notes that selling organs is punishable by law in Kazakhstan. At the same time, dozens of people and several organisations are involved in the procedure for organ transplantation, and hospitals do not benefit monetarily or otherwise if a patient becomes a donor after death. Still, he understands that scandals surrounding organ transplantation often deter people from signing the donation form. Last year alone, there were 15 cases where people attempted to sell donated organs. Religion also plays a role. Many believe Islam or Orthodox Christianity - the two main religions in Central Asia - do not allow posthumous donation. Religious authorities in Kazakhstan all support posthumous donation as a charitable act, but that still has not swayed many people. The religious question is not unique to Kazakhstan or Central Asia. Studies have shown that a reluctance to donate organs after death is a long-standing trend in Islamic countries where living donations prevail. In contrast, in Europe organ donation after death is an established practice, covering up to 50% of the need for organs. Unlike in other parts of the world, Europe also uses organs of donors who died due to heart failure. As of May 2025, 4,226 people in Kazakhstan are on the waiting list for some kind of organ donation, 128 of whom are children. Of the total number of patients, 3,828 are waiting for a kidney, but in the worst case scenario that a donor is not found, those patients also have the option of haemodialysis, which can keep them alive for between 10 and 15 years. "Not everyone who needs an organ transplant is on this list. This category has no other alternative, only an organ transplant can save their lives," highlighted the director of the transplantation coordination body. According to him, on average 300 people die because there simply are not enough organ donors. "I'll give you a simple example – in 2024, we had 86 deceased donors who were diagnosed with brain death. All relatives were approached and only 10 families gave their consent," said Sitkazinov, noting that one deceased person can save seven lives. Kazakhstan has an opt-in consent system, where each citizen has to officially agree to donate their organs after death. However, even if the person gives consent, their relatives must also agree. This system came into place in 2020, after several lawsuits from the relatives of deceased persons, who were outraged that organs were extracted without their consent. In 2024, there were 260 transplantations, of which 237 were from a living donor. "The main problem is refusal of relatives. We also have a very low expression of will. As of January 2025, with an adult population of 11 million, 115,000 people have expressed their will to opt out, and only 8,000 opted in," noted Sitkazinov. All Central Asian countries share similar problems when it comes to posthumous donation; lack of trust in the system and misconceptions about the donations themselves. Until public awareness increases and systems prove to be more transparent and secure the number of organ donations from deceased people is unlikely to grow significantly.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store