SAN ANTONIO – Like many social media posts about the COVID-19 vaccine, misinformation about the effects of the vaccine can be found all over social media.
Posts claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility in women and sterilization in men appear to be targeting those who are pregnant, looking to conceive, or planning a family in the future.
“So the short answer is, it does not cause infertility,” said Dr. Patrick Ramsey, Chief of Maternal Fetal Medicine for University Health System. “Currently we wouldn’t expect the vaccine to work any differently than we would for actual infections, so the preliminary data from the vaccines has shown no concerns for fertility for men or women.”
Ramsey said a lot has been learned about COVID-19 infections in the past year — one of which is that the virus doesn’t appear to affect the ability to carry a pregnancy.
In a KSAT virtual Town Hall in December UT Health’s Dr. Ruth Berggren echoes those thoughts, saying several vaccine trial participants got pregnant during the trials without issue, and COVID doesn’t not appear to be affecting pregnancies in general.
“There’s been tens of millions of cases of COVID-19 in the world since early January (2019), and we are not hearing that all the pregnant women who got COVID are suddenly miscarrying their pregnancies. That’s not been the case whatsoever,” Berggren said.
KSAT is labeling the claim that the COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility and sterilization as NOT TRUE.
Medical experts say anyone who is pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant should talk to their individuals providers when assessing if the COVID-19 vaccine is right for them.