Why the CDC is urging pregnant women to get vaccinated

Dr. Shikha Jain, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: We want to continue the conversation. For that, we want to bring in Dr. Shikha Jain, Assistant Professor of Medicine with the University of Illinois-Chicago. Dr. Jain, it's great to have you back on Yahoo Finance. Let's talk about what Anjalee was just discussing-- the fact that only 31% of pregnant women have gotten the vaccine.

There's lots of questions out there about whether or not maybe more clinical data is needed to convince these women that it is safe to get the vaccine. What would you say to a patient that came to you for advice and they were trying to weigh the benefits versus the risks right now?

SHIKHA JAIN: I've actually had hundreds of conversations on this topic over the last couple of months. So I can tell you what I actually do say to people. So first of all, the challenge oftentimes with clinical trials is women who are pregnant are not [AUDIO OUT]. The other issue that we often see is that because a lot of times these other drugs that are put out there, we don't see any clinical trial data.

So a lot of times, pregnant women are nervous to move forward with getting things like this vaccine. But what I tell all of my friends and my patients is that at this point, we know from real world data that women who contract COVID get very sick and have the chance of preterm births. And we see babies who are born who sometimes require ventilators because they've contracted the virus or they've been born prematurely because the mom developed COVID-19 symptoms early on.

So I think it's really important to encourage women who are pregnant. Even though we don't have the clinical trial data yet, we do have real world data. And we know that the virus is very dangerous for pregnant women and potentially even for their unborn babies. And the vaccine is very safe. And we've seen that across the board, across the world in all of the vaccines that we've given out to women who are pregnant.

ADAM SHAPIRO: And update us, too, on the data which shows that a woman who gets vaccinated passes the antibodies onto their unborn child. Do we know definitively if that's the case? And does that protect the child?

SHIKHA JAIN: So there is definitely some data that has shown that we're able to see antibodies from the mom passed down into the fetus and then into the baby when they're born. I'll be curious to see more data as it comes out, but the thought is that these newborn babies actually have some protection because of the antibodies from the mother were passed on to the baby when they were born.

So again, the protection is not only for the pregnant woman, it's also for your unborn child. So I have told every single one of my friends, my colleagues, anyone who has asked me that if they are pregnant, they should absolutely get the vaccine if they haven't yet. And I know many of my colleagues who were pregnant early on during the first surge of vaccines going out, they were all getting themselves vaccinated and not a single one of them has regretted it.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Jain, does it make sense, then, for pregnant women to be included, then, in the booster shot? Should women who are pregnant be getting a third shot at this point?

SHIKHA JAIN: So right now, pregnant women are not included. But I do think that's something we'll need to discuss and look into more, because we do know pregnancy in general does put you in a risk of being a little bit more immunocompromised than you would at baseline when you weren't pregnant. So I do think that's something that needs to be discussed and something we need to look into more.

And I wouldn't be surprised if those are some recommendations that come down in the future. But right now, my biggest thing that I want to emphasize is if you are pregnant, you should absolutely get yourself vaccinated as soon as possible, because the women we are seeing in the hospital very sick who are pregnant are the ones who are not vaccinated.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I know it gets very cold there on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago in the middle of winter, it gets really cold in New York and the Northeast-- Dr. Fauci says there could be another wave of COVID-19 in these colder parts of the country as we go into winter. But what would that look like, because these are the areas that do have very high vaccination rates?

SHIKHA JAIN: So I think a lot of it is going to depend on how many people we can keep getting vaccinated and how many places keep those indoor mask mandates. Because, again, as we've seen over this pandemic, a lot of things can change based on human behavior. If we can get our vaccination numbers up really high, then we can decrease transmitting COVID from person-to-person. If we can continue to encourage people to wear masks indoors, again, we can decrease the transmission from person-to-person.

As we enter cold and flu season, we know our hospitals oftentimes get overwhelmed with patients who are very sick from the flu. So I'm also really encouraging people to get the flu shot and their COVID vaccine. I'm going to be getting my booster COVID shot next week because I'm eligible as a health care worker, and I'm also going to be getting my flu shot next week. Because what we don't want to happen is as it gets colder, as we start seeing flu season, we don't want to see a surge in numbers of both COVID patients getting admitted and flu patients getting admitted. And then that will impact all of our health care systems by decreasing the amount of resources that we have to provide general medical care for people who may not have COVID or the flu.

SEANA SMITH: Doctor, here in New York City, teachers and staff they have a deadline of tomorrow to get vaccinated. We heard from United earlier this week, they're mandating all of their employees to be vaccinated. So now we have companies, now we have school districts trying to figure out how to implement some of these mandates. I guess just from your perspective, what measures do you think need to be put in place in order for this to be done effectively and efficiently?

SHIKHA JAIN: I think we need mandates anywhere where people are going to be engaging with other people. We have mandates in schools for all sorts of vaccines. So the majority of the population has gotten all of the vaccines that we need to be living in society. A lot of these mandates that are happening I think are a really good thing, because we're actually hearing people who said, well, I didn't think I needed to get the vaccine before because I'm young and healthy, but now I need it for my job so I'm going to go ahead and get myself vaccinated.

There's a lot of people who hadn't gotten vaccinated not because they were anti-vaccine or they didn't believe in it, they just didn't think they needed it. So I think to roll out mandates where businesses and employers require the people who work for their companies to get the vaccine is not only going to help the people who work there, it's also going to help these companies stay open. It's going to allow for businesses to thrive. It's going to allow our economy to continue to do better than it has been for the last year and a half. I think we need to get these mandates in place so that we can continue to live through this pandemic and hopefully make it a distant memory, where we're living with COVID-19, but it's not making us make decisions based on a pandemic.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Shikha Jain, Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of Illinois-Chicago, always great to speak with you. Thanks so much for joining us today.