Sperm count not harmed by Covid-19 vaccine, study says

CNN — If you are a man who has hesitated to get the Covid-19 vaccine due to concerns spread on social media that the vaccine may harm fertility, take heart. Sperm count and quality did not drop in healthy young men after receiving a first or second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, according to a new study published Thursday in JAMA. “This is reassuring data which suggests that sperm quality is not significantly altered by receiving two doses of one of the new mRNA vaccines for COVID-19,” said Allan Pacey, professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield in the UK, who also was not involved in the study. “We found no changes in sperm parameters in the young healthy men that we studied who received both doses of mRNA vaccine,” said study author Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at the University of Miami Health System. Pacey has reviewed over a dozen studies published on the topic, and he told CNN in January he had concluded that “any measurable effect of coronavirus on male fertility was probably only slight and temporary.” Medications used to treat Covid-19, fevers, obesity and many other factors can also impact sperm count and quality, so larger studies would need to be done to ensure that it was the virus causing the effect, Pacey said.