Neonatal intensive care unit admission among infants born full-term to CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Pregnancy Registry participants: A matched cohort study

To estimate incidence of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission among infants born to women receiving COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy versus among infants born to unvaccinated women. We matched full-term infants from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccine Pregnancy Registry (C19VPR) to full-term infants from CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) with participant report of NICU admission available. We used 1:1 convenience sampling to match by maternal age, race, and ethnicity (n = 5,487 pairs). Adjusted incidence ratios (aIR) for NICU admission were calculated using Poisson regression; sensitivity analyses included a state-based match. NICU admission incidence was lower among C19VPR infants than PRAMS infants (7.7% vs 11.3%, aIR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.65, 0.99). The highest aIR estimate generated through sensitivity analyses was 0.86 (95% CI: 0.67, 1.11). No evidence for an increased risk of NICU admission was found among infants born to vaccinated versus unvaccinated women.