Coronavirus: An earlier study did not find a higher risk of death among pregnant Covid patients, but the pregnant patients in the new study were 1.7 times more likely to die than nonpregnant patients. That amounted to a death rate of 1.5 per 1,000 cases among the symptomatic pregnant women, compared with 1.2 per 1,000 cases of symptomatic women who were not pregnant.
Even after adjustments were made for differences in age, race, ethnicity and underlying health conditions like diabetes and lung disease, the pregnant women were three times more likely than nonpregnant women to be admitted to an intensive care unit and 2.9 times more likely to receive mechanical ventilation.
The study also highlighted racial and ethnic disparities. Nearly one- third of the pregnant women who had Covid were Hispanic. And while Black women represented 14 percent of the pregnant women included in the analysis, nine of 34 deaths were Black women.
Dr. Ellington emphasized the importance of taking precautions to avoid infection, saying pregnant women should limit interactions to avoid people who may have been exposed.
“Pregnant women should be counseled about the importance of seeking prompt medical care if they have symptoms,” the authors wrote.
A smaller study, also released Monday from the C.D.C., reported that women who tested positive for the coronavirus were at increased risk for delivering their babies prematurely, finding that 12.9 percent of live births among a sample of 3,912 women were preterm births, compared with 10.2 percent in the general population. The sample was not nationally representative, but the finding echoes earlier reports that warned of a higher risk for preterm deliveries.
Among 610 newborns who were tested for the coronavirus, 2.6 percent were positive, with most of the infections occurring among babies whose mothers had the infection within a week of delivery.
The New York Times