NHS and Public Health England leaflet, titled ‘A guide to COVID-19 vaccination, All women of childbearing age, those currently pregnant or breastfeeding, You must read this before you go for your vaccination’, of the type used during COVID-19 vaccination work at University Hospital Coventry, England, 2020-2021.

Specific COVID-19 vaccine guidance was given to people of childbearing age, those currently pregnant or breast-feeding. The leaflet states "the early COVID-19 vaccines do not contain organisms that can multiply in the body, so they cannot infect an unborn baby in the womb."

When this leaflet was published in December 2020, at the beginning of the vaccine roll-out, it was advised that people who were pregnant should not be vaccinated unless at high risk of COVID-19. If someone became pregnant between doses they were told to delay their second dose. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) in the United Kingdom advised that those breastfeeding could have the vaccine if they wished.

In March 2021, the advice changed following research by Oxford University, clinical trials on the vaccine during pregnancy and observing symptoms of those pregnant people who have contracted COVID-19. Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advised that pregnant women should be offered COVID-19 vaccines. NHS England, the National Childbirth Trust and the Royal College of Obstetricians all recommend that pregnant women take up the vaccine.

The UK COVID-19 vaccination programme started on 8 December 2020 with Matron May Parsons, administering then 90 year old Margaret Keenan’s first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at University Coventry Hospital.