COVID-19 Vaccinated Pregnant Women Found at High-Risk for Breakthrough Infection

A new study published by Wisconsin-based Epic Research quantifies how specific comorbidities could affect the risk of breakthrough COVID-19 cases, defined as getting an infection after being 'fully vaccinated.'

Published on March 31, 2022, these Epic researchers used medical records to find pregnant women are 1.91 times as likely to have a breakthrough infection. 

And individuals with a solid organ transplant are 1.83 times as likely, and people with an immune system deficiency are 1.63 times as possible.

However, this study did not find that cancer increased the risk of breakthrough infections.

These data come from Cosmos, a HIPAA-defined Limited Data Set of more than 140 million patients from 161 Epic organizations, including 960 hospitals and 20,814 clinics, serving patients in all 50 states.

Two Epic teams completed this study, each composed of a clinician and research scientists who worked independently.

This study's findings support the U.S. CDC's recommendation that patients with high-risk comorbidity may need enhanced infection prevention control beyond vaccination to minimize the risk of future infection.

The CDC recently stated, 'even if you are fully vaccinated and live in an area with a high COVID-19 Community Level infection rate, you will be better protected if you wear a mask in indoor public places.'

And, 'people who are immunocompromised may not always build adequate levels of protection after an initial 3-dose primary mRNA COVID-19 vaccine series.'

Moreover, 'having certain underlying medical conditions and other factors, including age, can further increase the risk of getting very sick from COVID-19 during or at least 42 days following pregnancy.

As of February 19, 2022, the CDC's data dashboard presents COVID-19 vaccination among pregnant women aged 18-49 years overall, by race/ethnicity, and when the women were vaccinated.

Note: The Epic study and CDC information were edited for clarity and manually curated for mobile readers.