Public Health and Vaccination Policy

A new study of 146,031 children published in the journal Pediatrics finds that when mothers receive COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, their infants are significantly less likely to be hospitalized with COVID during the first months of life, with protection tapering off around five months of age. Researchers in Norway analyzed medical records for babies born between March 2020 and December 2023 and found that those whose mothers were vaccinated in pregnancy were about half as likely to need hospital care for COVID as infants whose mothers were not vaccinated. Crucially, the study also found no increase in hospital visits for other infections among vaccine-exposed infants, undercutting claims from some vaccine-policy critics that maternal COVID shots might weaken babies’ immune systems or make other illnesses more likely. U.S. obstetric and pediatric experts quoted in the piece say the results reinforce the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ existing guidance that pregnant women should receive COVID vaccination, both to reduce their own risk of severe disease and to pass antibodies that protect newborns who are too young to be vaccinated. The findings land amid ongoing misinformation online about COVID shots in pregnancy and provide some of the strongest real‑world data yet that the vaccines are safe for the fetus and confer short‑term protection for one of the highest‑risk age groups.

A new Journal of the American Medical Association study of more than 5 million U.S. births finds that parental refusal of newborn vitamin K injections nearly doubled from 2.9% in 2017 to 5.2% in 2024, alarming pediatricians who say social‑media misinformation and broader anti‑science trends are now eroding acceptance of basic preventive care beyond vaccines. Doctors report that parents who reject vitamin K are also far more likely to refuse the hepatitis B vaccine at birth and antibiotic eye ointment used to prevent potentially blinding infections, and clinicians in Idaho told their state AAP chapter they have seen eight infant deaths from vitamin K–deficiency bleeding in just 13 months. Researchers note that babies who skip the vitamin K shot are 81 times more likely to suffer severe bleeding, including brain hemorrhages, compared with newborns who receive it. The article also highlights a federal advisory committee, appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that voted to end the long‑standing recommendation to immunize all babies against hepatitis B immediately after birth—a move that was temporarily frozen this week when a federal judge blocked all decisions by the reconfigured panel. Pediatricians warn that the combination of rising refusals and politicized federal guidance could reverse decades of progress in preventing infant deaths and disabilities from conditions that modern medicine can easily avert.