Was the Covid-19 vaccine authorized too quickly for pregnant women? This is what, among others, the controversial professor Christian Perronne says in a video seen several million times in recent days on social networks, in particular on Facebook.
“Censored” in France, as a viral publication on Facebook proclaims, the spearhead of opponents of vaccination speaks from the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies. In his speech, the former head of the infectious diseases department at Garches hospital (Hauts-de-Seine) – removed from office by the director of the AP-HP in December 2020 – again explains that he was “tremendously shocked” by the rapid marketing authorization for the vaccine against Covid-19.
And to strongly denounce “the scandal of pregnant women”: “Usually, it takes ten years after the final marketing authorization for a vaccine to be authorized in a pregnant woman, with enough hindsight, he says. . There, in a few months, it was authorized! »
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While Luxembourg has adopted a health pass for all workers, the subject of a partially compulsory vaccination is disputed in the duchy. Professor Christian Perronne spoke in the hemicycle as part of a public debate, following a “petition” named “Stop gene therapy type vaccines (Covid-19) for our children”, signed by 4,674 people.
In Luxembourg, a public petition, which has been recognized as being of general interest and which has collected enough signatures on the website of the Chamber of Deputies – more than 4,500 – can be debated in public session. The deputies and the Luxembourg Minister of Health therefore exchanged on Wednesday January 12 with the petitioners, including Christian Perronne.
“We have to put ourselves in the context” of 2020
For Olivier Picone, obstetrician-gynecologist at the Louis-Mourier hospital in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) and member of the National College of French Gynecologists and Obstetricians (CNGOF), if it is “true” to say that the authorization of marketing of the vaccine for pregnant women was “rapid”, it is “totally false” to say that it is “scandalous”. It was certainly done “faster than the usual process”, but “you have to get back into the context of the first wave, the second and all that happened in 2020. There were dozens of publications which showed that the Covid was serious in pregnant women, that we had pregnant women in intensive care, that we had deaths in utero ”, develops the doctor.
In addition, pregnant women are often excluded from therapeutic trials, recalls the obstetrician-gynecologist, whether in the development of a drug or vaccines. For these, the data are mainly those of pharmacovigilance, that is to say the follow-up of the drug after the marketing. “On no vaccine, there has been a “vaccine versus placebo” therapeutic trial in pregnant women and there never will be! Given the obvious benefit of vaccination, it would not be ethical to carry out a study against placebo, taking the risk of giving a placebo to half of pregnant women, ”defends the president of the Research Group on Infections during Pregnancy. (Grig).
He specifies that the vaccines contraindicated during pregnancy are live attenuated vaccines, “that is to say with complete viruses, but whose virulence is attenuated, as for rubella or chickenpox”. “The normal living virus causes malformations, it is very well known, especially for rubella, he underlines. It is obviously dangerous during pregnancy. »
“Reassuring” data
For messenger RNA vaccines, data collected in animals, pharmacovigilance data and the benefit-risk balance, pregnancy being associated with a higher risk of developing a severe form, are “reassuring about the way the vaccine has been done”, adds Olivier Picone.
Recent studies reviewed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), involving 65,000 women, show that the two messenger RNA-based Covid vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, pose no risk to mothers or babies. Vaccinations also provided increased protection against hospitalizations and death, particularly in late pregnancy, the EMA points out. In France, the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) also goes in this direction and indicates that “studies have not shown, to date, any consequences of mRNA vaccines on the course of pregnancy”.