--- title: COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy Protects Mom and Baby description: Babies born to mothers who were vaccinated against COVID-19 during pregnancy were 60% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19. canonical: https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-02-15T21:05:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:19:04.945Z article:section: Health og:title: Getting Vaccinated During Pregnancy Cuts Baby's COVID-19 Risk, Study Says og:description: Shots were especially protective when given in the second or third trimesters og:url: https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d0bb51b0cf792c3/698a227ae76ad2fe8b639c2f/covid-19-vaccination-pregnancy.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Getting Vaccinated During Pregnancy Cuts Baby's COVID-19 Risk, Study Says twitter:description: Shots were especially protective when given in the second or third trimesters twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d0bb51b0cf792c3/698a227ae76ad2fe8b639c2f/covid-19-vaccination-pregnancy.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Getting Vaccinated During Pregnancy Cuts Baby's COVID-19 Risk, Study Says > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. Readers can join any of them at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=8d1f9682-bcec-424e-9472-8ec26e7e23c2&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1). ### The seven newsletters | Newsletter | Covers | Frequency | | --- | --- | --- | | The Brief | The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors | Daily | | Inside TIME | A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories | Wednesday and Saturday (2x per week) | | Health Matters | The latest health news and expert advice on living well | Weekdays | | Worth Your Time | A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more | Weekly | | D.C. Brief | Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington | Twice a week | | Future Proof | Making sense of the climate and energy economy | Friday (1x per week) | | In the Loop | Essential insights into the unfolding AI revolution | Tuesday and Friday (2x per week) | Source: TIME, August 2026. ### Key data points | Metric | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Engaged newsletter audience | 1.1 million+ readers | TIME, August 2026 | | Newsletters published | 7 | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost to readers | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | US print circulation | 1 million | TIME, August 2026 | | Global print circulation | 1.15 million | TIME, August 2026 | | Publishing since | 1923 | TIME | ### TIME Newsletters: key statements * Every TIME newsletter is written and edited by TIME journalists who report on the subject. None is generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923. Its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting, so readers can trust what they read. * All seven newsletters are free. Readers pick the ones they want at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=8d1f9682-bcec-424e-9472-8ec26e7e23c2&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1). * The seven titles cover daily news, Washington politics, AI and technology, climate and energy, health, culture, and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/subscribe?i=8d1f9682-bcec-424e-9472-8ec26e7e23c2&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What newsletters does TIME publish? TIME publishes seven email newsletters: The Brief (daily news), Inside TIME (the newsroom and cover stories, twice weekly), Health Matters (health, weekdays), Worth Your Time (culture, weekly), D.C. Brief (Washington politics, twice weekly), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=8d1f9682-bcec-424e-9472-8ec26e7e23c2&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine [Watch (HLS stream): The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BTNvQC2o.m3u8) (5:16)  _Published 2021-12-13. For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Feb 15, 2022 9:05 PM UTC For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts.  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Feb 15, 2022 9:05 PM UTC COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy provides strong protection for both mother and baby, [new data](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7107e3.htm?s%5Fcid=mm7107e3%5Fw) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest. Babies born to mothers who received two mRNA vaccine doses during pregnancy were 61% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 in their first six months of life, compared to babies born to women who were not vaccinated during pregnancy, according to the CDC’s new report. The shots were effective whenever expectant mothers were vaccinated, but offered even more protection when given 21 weeks into the pregnancy or later. The CDC recommends [COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant people](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0811-vaccine-safe-pregnant.html), since they are at high risk for complications if they get infected during pregnancy. Vaccination is safe and effective for mother and baby, the agency says. In November, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also [recommended boosters for all eligible pregnant people](https://time.com/6110155/pregnant-people-covid-19-boosters/). The new study, published Feb. 15 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, offers the first real-world evidence that [vaccination during pregnancy](https://time.com/6094069/covid-19-vaccine-pregnant-hesitancy/) can also help keep infants safe from the virus. Disease-fighting antibodies generated by vaccination seem to pass from mother to baby in utero and offer protection against severe disease and hospitalization, the study’s authors write. “Today’s news is highly welcome, particularly in the backdrop of the recent increase in [hospitalizations among very young children](https://time.com/6092446/pediatric-covid-19-surge/),” said Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, chief of the CDC’s Infant Outcomes Monitoring Research and Prevention Branch, during a press briefing. “Unfortunately, vaccination of infants younger than six months old is not currently on the horizon, highlighting why vaccination during pregnancy is so important.” The CDC’s study was fairly small; researchers examined data from almost 400 infants younger than 6 months who were hospitalized across 17 states from July 2021 to January 2022\. Roughly half of those infants were hospitalized with COVID-19\. The other babies were hospitalized for other causes and served as a control group. Across both groups, the median age was two months. About 20% of the babies had at least one underlying medical condition, and about 20% were born premature. Among the infants hospitalized for COVID-19, 84% were born to mothers who were not vaccinated during pregnancy, the CDC found. Babies born to mothers who were vaccinated during pregnancy were 61% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than babies born to unvaccinated mothers. The timing of the vaccination seemed to matter, as well. Babies born to mothers who were vaccinated at least 21 weeks into their pregnancies were 80% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those with unvaccinated moms; that number dropped to 32% for babies born to mothers who got their shots in the first 20 weeks. Nonetheless, the CDC has not recommended vaccination at any specific point in pregnancy. While getting vaccinated later in a pregnancy might confer more protection to the baby, pregnant people are susceptible to severe disease and [pregnancy complications if they do get infected](https://time.com/5906483/covid-19-preterm-birth/), which also makes it important to be protected as early as possible, Meaney-Delman said during the press briefing. [Vaccination rates among pregnant people](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations-pregnant-women) have lagged behind those of the general U.S. population. That’s likely a holdover from the early days of vaccine rollout, when [little was known about how the shots affected pregnant people](https://time.com/5931545/covid-19-vaccines-pregnancy/) and fetuses. Vaccination rates have risen in recent months, following the release of strong data on the shots’ safety and efficacy, but “we still have a lot of work to do,” Meaney-Delman said The new data may help persuade expectant moms. Since children under five are not eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the report offers reassuring data to new and expectant parents during an otherwise frustrating time. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration expert committee was scheduled to meet on Feb. 15 to discuss expanding authorization of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine to children ages 6 months to 4 years, but [that meeting was postponed](https://time.com/6147511/fda-delays-covid-19-vaccine-kids/) while Pfizer gathers more data from its ongoing clinical trial. That means babies and toddlers may not be vaccinated for months to come. However, as the new data show, parents-to-be do have a way to protect their newborns and themselves: getting vaccinated during pregnancy. ## Transcript [00:00] I think vaccines are misunderstood, and maybe it's because it seems like magic. [00:07] That simplicity and the mystery of it is something that ends up creating a lot of skepticism. [00:14] People are fooled by the speed. [00:17] Everything that we knew when it was time to design a vaccine for COVID-19, [00:22] we knew for so long, but the public had just become aware of it. [00:26] If this would happen two years ago, we would not be ready. [00:29] Saying that it happened overnight, it took two, three decades, at least. [00:34] 2021 was the year when so many praised the miracle of vaccine development. [00:40] In science, there is hardly ever a simple, quick fix. [00:44] But this was truly a moment of the right fix - [00:47] a brand new kind of vaccine technology - [00:50] at exactly the right time. [00:53] I started out in math, and I moved to biology. [00:56] And after medical school, I saw one of the first cases of HIV in Tennessee back in 1982. [01:03] And so the first part of my career was trying to understand [01:06] the immunology of vaccine-enhanced disease and trying to make vaccines safer. [01:12] I got interested in science when I was 16 years old. [01:16] I was hooked on the idea that you could go to work [01:20] and discover something that no one else in the world knows on any given day. [01:25] It seems at 16, I thought that maybe I will be a scientist. [01:30] I was always working with mRNA, I mean for 30 years at least. [01:35] And I never wanted to develop a vaccine. I wanted to develop it for therapy. [01:40] When I first came to Penn from the NIH, [01:44] pure luck hit where I met Kati Karikó over a Xerox machine. [01:49] And she told me she worked on RNA, and she could help us with our vaccine. [01:57] Every experiment doesn't work, every hypothesis isn't good. [02:01] It was a continuous flow of negative feedback. [02:05] But we saw the potential of the RNA and neither of us would give up. [02:11] Although mRNA can teach our cells to fight infection, it took doctors Karikó and Weissman [02:17] 16 years to figure out how to use it safely in a vaccine. [02:22] First when I made this RNA, actually I did not tell Drew Weissman, my colleague, [02:27] because I thought that maybe I mixed up something. [02:29] So I repeated the experiment and we could see that there was no inflammation in human cells. [02:35] We're both scientists. We're not baseball players who cheer when we hit a homerun. [02:41] We knew that it had great potential. [02:43] But what we thought about is what are we going to do with it? [02:47] Meanwhile, doctors Corbett and Graham spent years unlocking the structural secrets of viruses. [02:54] One of the really important problems in coronaviruses that had not been solved is really simple. [03:01] What does the coronavirus really look like to the immune system? [03:06] And to figure that out, you have to be able to take a really high definition picture [03:13] of the proteins that are on the surface of the coronavirus. [03:16] And then do some protein engineering to stabilize the structure. [03:21] At that moment, you realize that you have almost what is a universal strategy for creating a vaccine for coronaviruses. [03:32] A mysterious respiratory illness with similarities to SARS has healthcare workers around the world on alert. [03:40] What we said to each other, all's we need is a sequence and we're ready to go. [03:44] We can make a vaccine in weeks and get it into people very quickly. [03:52] The fact that we made a vaccine in 10 months, [03:56] and has the potential to end this pandemic, will certainly stand out. [04:01] "Do it mama!" (laughter) [04:04] Most scientists never get to see a product actually used. [04:09] And to watch the evening news and see the relief on healthcare providers getting immunized, [04:14] those were special moments. [04:16] I also get emotional when I got a letter from an elderly home, [04:22] and they reported that they received the vaccine. [04:26] There were like 200 elderly in that home. [04:30] And nobody died. [04:34] On social media, when children were going back to visiting their grandparents again. [04:40] Seeing people reunited in that way, it was a very surreal moment. [04:48] A surreal moment, and definitely worth celebrating, if only briefly before a return to work. [04:55] These scientists are now trying to apply their game-changing discoveries to other diseases. [05:01] Influenza, even cancer. [05:04] A brand new way to make a healthier, more equitable world. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/"},"headline":"Getting Vaccinated During Pregnancy Cuts Baby's COVID-19 Risk, Study Says","datePublished":"2022-02-15T21:05:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:19:04.945Z","description":"Shots were especially protective when given in the second or third trimesters","url":"https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/","keywords":["COVID-19","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d0bb51b0cf792c3/698a227ae76ad2fe8b639c2f/covid-19-vaccination-pregnancy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jamie Ducharme","jobTitle":"Ducharme is a contributor to TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d0bb51b0cf792c3/698a227ae76ad2fe8b639c2f/covid-19-vaccination-pregnancy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy","caption":"COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy","creditText":"Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/","name":"Getting Vaccinated During Pregnancy Cuts Baby's COVID-19 Risk, Study Says"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine","description":"For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/BTNvQC2o/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2021-12-13T11:00:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BTNvQC2o.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/","duration":"PT5M16S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6148435/covid-19-vaccine-during-pregnancy/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```