The emergency physician at Baystate Medical Center in western Massachusetts was one of the first to be offered a Pfizer vaccine after rollout began in December, in line with the state’s distribution plan and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that front-line health care workers be among the first to get the shots. As of Jan. 2, more than 4 million people had received their first dose, CDC data shows.
By nearly all accounts, Westafer is a perfect vaccine candidate. As an ER doctor, she is dangerously close to COVID-19.
“We put in the breathing tubes, we see the patients that are not so sick,” she says after an overnight shift in mid-December, during which she says she saw a “bunch of COVID patients.” According to data from the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts, Hampden County, where Westafer’s hospital is located, saw an average daily incidence rate of 66 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 from Dec. 6 to Dec. 19 – nearly 16 times its rate in late July and early August.
But there was also a catch: After months of fertility treatment, Westafer was seven weeks pregnant.
As is often the case, neither Pfizer nor Moderna – the two companies that have received emergency use authorization for their vaccines in the U.S. – included pregnant women in their clinical trials, meaning no hard safety and efficacy data is available for this population. But with women accounting for some 75% of health care workers – and with 330,000 of those workers expected to be pregnant or postpartum – many will be facing a potentially difficult choice when it comes to getting the vaccine.