WOMEN who are pregnant or trying to conceive can register to be vaccinated against Covid-19, provided they have first consulted their doctors, Dr Adham Baba said.

The health minister said that this was the current conclusion after examining clinical data. 

“There were 23 volunteers, who were pregnant unknowingly, who participated in a Pfizer test carried out on the vaccine and the placebo.

“What had happened was that, in the placebo, two of them had contraindications, namely spontaneous miscarriage, so we have clinical data on that,” he told reporters after the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee (JKJAV) meeting today.

Earlier, medical experts advised that pregnant and breastfeeding women defer taking the Covid-19 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to avoid any possible side effects.

Their reason was that there was no clinical evidence to support the vaccine use among pregnant women yet. 

However, since the Pfizer vaccine used messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and not the live virus, it is deemed safe.

“Although the ministry has made a decision that pregnant and conceiving women can get vaccinated in phase one, two and three, the condition is that they have contacted their specialists or doctors who treat them for risk assessment and identify which is more dangerous for them – Covid-19 or the pregnancy,” Dr Adham said.

The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme phase one (February - April 2021) is for front-line staff, phase two (April - August 2021) is for senior citizens above 60 years and other high risk groups, and Phase 3 (May 2021 - February 2022) is for the general adult population in Malaysia. – March 1, 2021.