This podcast is brought to you in part by PNAS Science Sessions, a production of the proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences. Science Sessions offers brief yet insightful discussions

with some of the world's top researchers. Just in time for the spooky season of Halloween,

we invite you to explore the extraordinary hunting abilities of spiders featuring impressive

aerial maneuvers and webs that function as sensory antennas, follow science sessions,

on popular podcast platforms like iTunes, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Hi and welcome to COVID Quickly, a scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update. On the COVID pandemic, we bring you up to speed on the science

behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research

and we help you understand what it really means. I'm Tonya Lewis. And I'm Josh Fishman.

We're a scientific American senior health editors. Today, we're going to be talking about why

COVID vaccines seemed safe for pregnancy and the rarity of blood clots with the Johnson and Johnson

vaccine and the first strong data showing that COVID still hurts many people months after they first

got sick. Parents to be have worried about the safety of COVID vaccines for pregnancy.

Josh, this week there's some reassurance, right?

Yes, there's some good news. A study of about 35,000 pregnant women done from December 2020

through February of this year found that they reported no extra problems. They had the same levels

of side effects that non-pregnant women had. Soreness in the arms where they got the shot, fatigue,

and headaches. A small group of these women, just about 800 of them, finished their pregnancies

during the study. And again, the results parallel to general population. 86% of the pregnancies

resulted in live births. Rates of miscarriage, birth defects, premium births and low birth

weights were very close to what women experienced before the pandemic hit us. Now, there are some

...