Thread by @ariehkovler

Israel saw VERY bad outcomes for pregnant women with Covid as early as January. The UK didn't —or if it did, it wasn't reported.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1448137438610685952

In Israel, pregnant women were made a risk group and given early access to the vaccine. For most of 2021, the UK didn't even *recommend* vaccines to pregnant women.

https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1379751041604972557

Israel first noted bad outcomes for pregnant women during the Alpha wave. There was a couple of months where once or twice a week, a woman or her foetus died of Covid, usually in the third trimester.

https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1353042604636696577

At this point, my wife was pregnant, in her first trimester. We watched as the guidance for pregnant women went from "no vaccine" to "permitted, not recommended" to "recommended" to "recommended but only after the first trimester". And then back to "recommended" again. Confusing.

We had to decide: Does my wife want to be one of the first pregnant women in the world to get vaccinated? Today, millions of pregnant women have been vaxxed without incident. Then it was just dozens.

We asked our doctors. They had conflicting advice. In the end, we decided to wait until the second trimester and basically self-isolated for a few weeks until then. I also got vaccinated early myself, skipping the queue partly by explaining the situation.

I don't blame pregnant women in the UK for not vaccinating. The guidance has changed so many times, and there hasn't been a proper push to encourage them.

But the government should probably be promoting vaccination in pregnant women. Say a visual ad with women who DID get vaccinated holding their healthy babies, and maybe someone who didn't talking about what happened. Hard hitting, sure, but necessary.