July 14, 2026
According to STIKO’s report, severe COVID-19 cases during pregnancy are now rare and healthy pregnant women now face a risk that’s comparable to that of healthy women of the same age group.
STIKO continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination, however, for pregnant women with diabetes, hypertension, immune deficiency, significant chronic disease or pregnancy-related complications.
Sterz suggested the new policy should have been recommended from the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
“Why was this not the strategy from the very beginning? Vaccination of pregnant women with an unknown, not properly evaluated vaccine was a criminal medical act,” Sterz said.
Sterz cited the “Pfizer documents,” released in 2024 and analyzed by independent researchers. The documents cited vaccine-related deaths, serious adverse events among pregnant women and irreversible harm to reproductive health in the clinical trial data of the original Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot.
STIKO’s report does not address adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination — for pregnant women or any other population group. This despite continuing questions about the safety of the mRNA vaccine technology, which some scientists have said puts people at risk, and calls for their suspension.
Walach suggested that safety concerns likely underlie STIKO’s new guidance, even if those concerns are not spelled out in its report.
“I think it is becoming more and more obvious that the mRNA shots are problematic. Without specifically acknowledging this, this perception likely underlies this recommendation,” Walach said. “There have been multiple calls for the STIKO to change their policy. It seems they have caved in,” Walach said.
An October 2024 survey conducted in Germany found that 1 in 6 respondents reported experiencing side effects after receiving a COVID-19 shot.
Internal RKI documents released by an anonymous whistleblower in July 2024 showed that the organization overlooked COVID-19 vaccine safety concerns, seeking to skip Phase 3 trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and to release the product “straight into broad application.”
The documents also showed that widespread vaccination of children and other pandemic-era policies weren’t based on rational or scientific considerations but on political factors.
Walach said STIKO’s guidance does not go far enough and that it should instead “express a wholesale recommendation to not use mRNA for any vaccine.”
Last month, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) committee unanimously voted to recommend approval of Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine for the 50-64 and 65-plus age groups. Full FDA approval is pending.
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