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In April 2020, as SARS-CoV-2 was first beginning to spread through New England, researchers at two hospitals in Boston — Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s — began attending deliveries in the Covid units to collect blood and placenta samples from pregnant patients who’d caught the dangerous new infectious disease. That biorepository, which has since grown to house samples from more than 1,000 people, including dozens who received either the Moderna or Pfizer Covid shots, is now helping to answer important questions about the response to the vaccines and coronavirus infection during pregnancy. (Molteni, 10/19)

Sometimes when she’s feeding her infant daughter, Amanda Harrison is overcome with emotion and has to wipe away tears of gratitude. She is lucky to be here, holding her baby. Harrison was 29 weeks pregnant and unvaccinated when she got sick with COVID-19 in August. Her symptoms were mild at first, but she suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. Living in Phenix City, Alabama, she was intubated and flown to a hospital in Birmingham, where doctors delivered baby Lake two months early and put Harrison on life support. (Chandler, 10/19)

U.S. health officials have recorded more than 125,000 COVID-19 cases and 161 deaths in pregnant women over the course of the pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Now, hospitals and doctors in places where the virus runs rampant are seeing an increase in severely ill pregnant women with the virus, the Associated Press reported. (Cagnassola, 10/19)

ESPN reporter Allison Williams’s decision to leave the network over a Covid-19 vaccine requirement underscores the battle that doctors say they are waging to convince pregnant women, and those planning a pregnancy, to get the shots. Ms. Williams, 37, shared her decision in a recent Instagram video. She said she wants a second child and is concerned that the vaccine may affect her fertility or pregnancy. While scientists have found no link between Covid-19 vaccines and fertility problems or miscarriage, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors say they are seeing many women who share Ms. Williams’s concerns. (Petersen and Abdel-Baqui, 10/19)

KHN: Scientists Search For Cause Of Mysterious Covid-Related Inflammation In Children 

Like most other kids with covid, Dante and Michael DeMaino seemed to have no serious symptoms. Infected in mid-February, both lost their senses of taste and smell. Dante, 9, had a low-grade fever for a day or so. Michael, 13, had a “tickle in his throat,” said their mother, Michele DeMaino, of Danvers, Massachusetts. At a follow-up appointment, “the pediatrician checked their hearts, their lungs, and everything sounded perfect,” DeMaino said. Then, in late March, Dante developed another fever. After examining him, Dante’s doctor said his illness was likely “nothing to worry about” but told DeMaino to take him to the emergency room if his fever climbed above 104. (Szabo, 10/20)