A decision by Government vaccine advisors to no longer recommend Covid immunisation in pregnancy has been criticised by two leading infectious disease experts.

In a piece in The Conversation, the academics raised concerns about how the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) had come to its decision and whether they had looked at wider health risks.

Professor Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London and member of the Independent SAGE committee, and Professor Sheena Cruickshank, professor of immunology at the University of Manchester, said while the risk to mother and baby from Covid was lower than it once was, it still remained.

It follows updated recommendations for Covid vaccine eligibility from 2025 onwards published by the JCVI this month which found it would be ‘highly unlikely’ that vaccinating pregnant women would be cost effective.

The advice had changed as the UK had moved from Covid being a pandemic to an endemic disease, the committee said.

Recent data suggests that the risk of hospitalisation and death in pregnant individuals had ‘significantly reduced in the Omicron period’, the JCVI said, noting there had been no deaths in people who were pregnant in the last 18 months.

The advisory committee also suggested narrowing the vaccine offer to other groups depending on what would be deemed cost effective.

They recommended that both spring and autumn Covid vaccine campaigns next year should be restricted to the over-75s, residents of a care home for older adults and those six months and over who are immunosuppressed.

A final decision on who will be eligible will be taken by ministers.

Several concerns about the advice were raised by the experts who are both affiliated with Independent SAGE – a group of scientists who formed to provide independent advice on the Covid-19 pandemic response.

They said alongside the direct benefit of reducing the chance of Covid infection and severe illness as well as complications such as preterm birth and stillbirth, there were also risks for the unborn baby that should be considered.

‘Infants do not have fully developed immune systems, and a Covid infection is their first time meeting the virus. As such, they are very vulnerable to Covid infections, as they are to other respiratory infections’, they wrote.

They also pointed out that vaccines for flu, whooping cough and RSV are given in pregnancy for this reason.

Other recent research had shown that for Covid, the risk for A&E attendance, hospital admission and severe hospital admission was highest in babies under six months old – higher even than for people over 90 years old, they added.

‘It’s not clear how the JCVI assessed the cost-effectiveness that has led to the change in recommendation to withdraw the COVID vaccine in pregnancy,’ they said, adding that the guidance appears to prioritise preventing deaths does not appear to include ‘consideration of miscarriage, stillbirth and health risks to the baby’.

DHSC and UKHSA have been approached for comment.

This article first appeared on our sister title Pulse.