Uptake of COVID-19 Vaccines among Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

  1. Petros Galanis
  2. Irene Vraka
  3. Olga Siskou
  4. Olympia Konstantakopoulou
  5. Aglaia Katsiroumpa
  6. Daphne Kaitelidou

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Mass vaccination against COVID-19 is essential to control the pandemic. COVID-19 vaccines are now recommended during pregnancy to prevent adverse outcomes. With this review, we aimed to evaluate the evidence in the literature regarding the uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations among pregnant women. A comprehensive search was performed in PubMed, Medline, Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, CINAHL, and medRxiv from inception to 23 March 2022. We performed a meta-analysis to estimate the overall proportion of pregnant women vaccinated against COVID-19. We found 11 studies including 703,004 pregnant women. The overall proportion of pregnant women vaccinated against COVID-19 was 27.5% (95% CI: 18.8–37.0%). Predictors of COVID-19 vaccination uptake were older age, ethnicity, race, trust in COVID-19 vaccines, and fear of COVID-19 during pregnancy. Mistrust in the government, diagnosis of COVID-19 during pregnancy, and fears about the safety and side effects of COVID-19 vaccines were reasons for declining vaccination. The global COVID-19 vaccination prevalence in pregnant women is low. A large gap exists in the literature on the factors influencing the decision of pregnant women to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Targeted information campaigns are essential to increase vaccine literacy among pregnant women.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.3390/vaccines10050766
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.01.22273296: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsField Sample Permit: We treated data collection time as a continuous variable giving the number 1 for studies that were conducted in December 2020, the number 2 for studies that were conducted in January 2020, etc.
    Sex as a biological variableThe population of interest was pregnant women and the outcome was the COVID-19 vaccination uptake.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    We searched PubMed, Medline, Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, CINAHL, and a pre-print service (medRxiv) from inception to March 23, 2022.
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)
    Medline
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)
    ProQuest
    suggested: (ProQuest, RRID:SCR_006093)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: Our review and meta-analysis is subject to some limitations. Data taken from databases may not provide the most up-to-date evidence regarding COVID-19 vaccination uptake among pregnant women due to publication process. This limitation is of particular importance in the present review, as the data on vaccination of pregnant women are constantly increasing. Moreover, data collection time among studies ranged from December 2020 to October 2021, while evidence regarding safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women is increasing significantly on an ongoing basis. Thus, we should interpret the results of this review with care since they may not directly predict future behavior of pregnant women. Additionally, we could not generalize our results since the number of relevant studies included in this review is low and these studies were conducted only in five countries. Only five studies examined the factors that affect pregnant women decision to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Moreover, these studies investigated mainly demographic factors, e.g. age, ethnicity, race, etc. Τhere is a large gap in the literature on the factors influencing the decision of pregnant women to be vaccinated against the COVID-19. For instance, psychological factors and social media variables that could affect women’ attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination uptake are not investigated so far. Regarding meta-analysis, we applied a random effects model and we performed subgroup and meta-regres...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2022.04.01.22273296v1 on medRxiv