Dr Peter McKenna, the head of the HSE's National Women and Infants Health Programme has described suggestions of a link between Covid-19 vaccines and infertility as “a piece of nonsense.”
Such suggestions were dangerous and belonged in the same box as injecting oneself with bleach, he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show.
Dr McKenna encouraged all pregnant women to get vaccinated. He went on to say that “any woman of child bearing age” should get vaccinated “in case she gets pregnant.”
Cyberattack
The cyberattack on the HSE had caused problems with the collating of figures on the number of pregnant women who had been vaccinated. Prior to the cyberattack that rate had been 40 percent, but he expected that figure had increased considerably.
Pregnant women should actively seek to be vaccinated as because of Delta, there was now a higher risk of them becoming “very unwell.”
When asked about the recommendation that pregnant women be vaccinated at 14 weeks, he said that he did not think the timing was an issue and that women who had been vaccinated, unaware that they were pregnant, should not be concerned.
There was no evidence of a link in the two incidences of women miscarrying post vaccination. The events could have been associated rather than causal.
There wasn’t "a scintilla of scientific evidence" of a link between vaccination and infertility, he said. Unfortunately there wasn’t a better way to scare women which was what was happening on social media, he said.
