The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that pregnant women are more at risk for severe COVID-19 complications. This was only true during the Delta wave.
The agency published Friday reports that showed the death rate for COVID-19 in pregnant women during periods when the Delta variant was considered the dominant strain.
Pre-Delta: Five out of 1,000 pregnancies infected with the virus died, compared to 25 of 1,000 who were infected during the Delta period.
Researchers also discovered that stillbirths were twice as common in pregnant women who had been infected before giving birth.
While the Delta strain was dominant, pregnant women died five times as often from COVID-19 than in the previous months.
A CDC study has found that pregnant women infected by COVID-19 at birth are twice as likely than those who have not been infected.
One of their reports was based on the analysis by the CDC team of Mississippi’s pregnancy deaths data between March 2020 and October 2021.
Out of the 1,637 infections total, 15 Covid-related deaths were found in pregnant women during this period.
Six deaths occurred among pregnant women during the pre-Delta time period (March 2020 to June 2021). This is five per 1,000 infections.
The numbers quickly climbed during the Delta period from July to Oct 2021 with nine pregnant women dying – that’s 25 deaths per 1,000 infected.
One in fifteen of the women who lost their lives to the virus was a woman with a medical condition.
They were all not fully vaccinated and one only was partially.
There were three deaths during the pregnancy. Two stillbirths occurred and one spontaneous abortion.
7 of these women had to have an emergency C section in order to save their child. 12 other women also died soon after giving birth.
12 of these women were Hispanic or black, which highlights already the high rate of maternal death in the U.S.
The CDC published a separate report on Friday afternoon that examined the rates of stillbirths in pregnant women with HIV at delivery.
Data was gathered from approximately 1.2 Million births in the United States between March 2020 and June 20,21.
Stillbirths are rare. They occur in 0.65 percent to 0.65% of pregnant women not infected by Covid.
In the data, 21653 women were infected and gave birth.
These women had twice the chance of stillbirths, and 273 (or 1.26%) babies did not survive delivery.
These were much more prevalent in the Delta Period, where 2.7 percent of pregnant women infected between July and September 2021 had stillbirths. This is four times higher than the 0.63 percent rate for uninfected mothers.
Research suggests that pregnant women get COVID-19 to prevent adverse health effects. Only 35% are currently fully vaccinated in pregnancy, which is well below the national average. Pictured: In St Petersburg, Russia, a pregnant woman receives the COVID-19 vaccine.
Most likely to have stillbirths were infected women with hypertension, an adverse heart event, or who required a ventilator because of Covid.
These data, according to the researchers, make Covid vaccination even more crucial for pregnant women.
Researchers wrote, “Implementing evidence-based COVID-19 Prevention Strategies, including vaccination during or before pregnancy is essential to reduce the effect of COVID-19’s stillbirths.”
According to CDC data, pregnant women make up one-third of all Americans who are not fully vaccinated.
For comparison, almost 70 percent of U.S. adult are fully vaccinated.