A group of Ontario hospitals is urging pregnant people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, citing a recent trend of infant hospitalizations due to the disease.
Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, McMaster Children's Hospital, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario and Kingston Health Sciences Centre made a joint statement on the issue.
The group says six babies younger than 12 months have been admitted to Hamilton and Ottawa facilities because of COVID-19 since the middle of December.
They say all infants admitted to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa had unvaccinated mothers.
The group of hospitals say infants' immune systems have difficulty fighting disease especially without maternal antibodies transferred during pregnancy from vaccination.
Their statement says research out of the Ottawa children's hospital has shown no adverse pregnancy outcomes in Ontario from COVID-19 vaccines, but vaccination coverage has remained lower among pregnant people than the general population.