The mRNA vaccines, which include the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, were at one point feared to have a negative impact on fertility, which was among the reasons many people were hesitant to get vaccinated.
But this new study seems to indicate that this isn't a concern. According to the study, which was published in the widely circulated academic journal JAMA, the vaccines have no effect on fertility whatsoever.
"We measured semen volume, sperm concentration and the total amount of moving sperm and found there were no declines in any of the parameters as compared to the baseline analysis," Daniel C. Gonzalez, B.Sc, the study's fist author, explained, according to the News Medical website.
Fears of how the vaccine would impact female fertility were also a concern in the early days of the vaccine. However, studies, including an April study from the Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel, have found that this is not the case.
That study also concluded that COVID-19 itself doesn't harm female fertility.
However, according to the University of Miami, men don't have such luck, though the fact that the vaccine doesn't harm it could help reduce hesitancy.
"We were the first to demonstrate that the COVID virus, itself, can affect male fertility and be a potential cause for erectile dysfunction," explained Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, M.D., associate professor and director of the University of Miami Miller School's Reproductive Urology Program, according to News Medical.
"We are now the first to examine if there is any impact of the COVID vaccine on male fertility potential, which we did not find."
Vaccine hesitancy is linked to a variety of factors, including misconceptions regarding its side effects, such as fertility. However, the fact that the vaccines have no such impact despite the virus itself harming male fertility makes sense considering how the vaccine operates. Neither mRNA vaccine, or even any other type of COVID-19 vaccine such as Sputnik or the AstraZeneca vaccines, use a live form of the virus. Rather, as reported by the Hindustan Times, it merely acts as a conduit for the code of the Spike protein of the Sars-CoV-2.