15.01.2022 01:42
Pregnant women with virus ‘more likely to be admitted to critical care, receive invasive ventilation ... and die,’ say researchers.
Research recently published in Nature Medicine magazine revealed that unvaccinated pregnant women are more likely to be hospitalized for the coronavirus.
"COVID-19 in pregnancy is associated with increased risk of the pregnancy specific complications pre-eclampsia, preterm birth and stillbirth," according to the monthly research magazine. "SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination rates in pregnant women in Scotland," that analyzed data from an 11-month observation of 87,000 pregnant women in Scotland from December 2020 to October 2021.
Noting that pregnant women do not seem to be more susceptible to the virus than non-pregnant women, researchers found that pregnant women are still at "higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease."
They also found that "pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 infection are more likely to be admitted to critical care, receive invasive ventilation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and die."
From December 2020 and October 2021, a total of 2,364 babies were born to mothers with COVID-19 during pregnancy.
"Of these, 2,353 were live births, of which 241 were preterm births," it added.
While the percentage of premature births in the general population was 8%, that rate was 17% in babies born within 28 days of their mothers being infected with the virus. -