Covid vaccine: Fertility and miscarriage claims fact-checked
False and misleading claims that Covid-19 vaccines harm fertility and cause miscarriages are still circulating online, against all the evidence.
Doctors are extremely cautious about what they recommend during pregnancy, so the original advice was to avoid the jab.
But now, so much safety data has become available that this advice has changed and the vaccine is now actively encouraged (as getting Covid can put a pregnancy at risk).
We have looked at some of the more persistent claims – and why they are wrong.
A study shows the vaccine accumulating in the ovaries – False
This theory comes from a misreading of a Japanese study.
The study involved giving rats a much higher dose of vaccine than that given to humans (1,333 times higher).
Only 0.1% of the total dose ended up in the animals’ ovaries, 48 hours after injection.
Far more – 53% after one hour and 25% after 48 hours – was found at the injection site (in humans, usually the arm). The next most common place was the liver (16% after 48 hours), which helps get rid of waste products from the blood.
The vaccine is delivered using a bubble of fat containing the virus’s genetic material, which kick-starts the body’s immune system.
And those promoting this claim cherry-picked a figure which actually referred to the concentration of fat found in the ovaries.
Agencies