Dr. Sadeghi-Nejad discusses the effect of COVID-19 and the vaccine on fertility and pregnancy

Video Transcript

Looking at the concept of COVID-19 affecting fertility, obviously both men and women can be affected. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine has strongly encouraged physicians to discuss and encourage patients to get vaccinated. As you know, pregnant women have not been part of the vaccine clinical trials. But the CDC reported that there have been more than 150,000 women who actually got the vaccine while they were pregnant. And there were absolutely no adverse effects and that is certainly very encouraging and part of the reasoning behind the ASRM recommendations for us to discuss that and encourage patients to get vaccinated.

On the men's side, it's important to know that the important parameters that we look at when we evaluate a semen analysis such as sperm concentration, sperm motility, and semen volume, none of these are affected by vaccination. So on the male side, also, we encourage our patients to be vaccinated. And conversely, we know that patients who are affected by COVID 19 may have compromised fertility certainly during the acute phase, but this seems to be a transient phenomenon. And I have actually seen a few patients who soon after COVID-19 and infection found that their semen parameters had been adversely affected and there are reports so there are few reports in the literature, of this being a transient phenomenon and recovering with time which is certainly very encouraging and important for patients to be aware of.