Worldwide beliefs among pregnant women on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: SARS-CoV-2 vaccine has been recommended to pregnant women, but survey studies showed contrasting findings worldwide in relation to the willingness to accept vaccination during pregnancy. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the evidence from the literature regarding the acceptance rate of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in pregnant and breastfeeding women. STUDY DESIGN: We performed a systematic review on the main databases (MEDLINE (PubMed), Scopus, ISI Web of Science) searching for all the peer-reviewed survey studies analyzing the eventual acceptance rate of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine among pregnant and breastfeeding women. To combine data meta-analyses of proportions and pooled proportions with their 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. RESULTS: 15 studies including 25,839 women were included in the analysis. The proportion of women actually willing to be vaccinated during pregnancy is 49.1% (95% CI, 42.3–56.0), and the proportion of breastfeeding women is 61.6% (95% CI, 50.0–75.0). CONCLUSION: The cumulative SARS-CoV-2 vaccine acceptance rate among pregnant women appears still low. Vaccinal campaign are urgently needed to drive more confidence into the vaccine to help reducing the spread of the infection and the possible consequences during pregnancy.