Pregnant patients who get COVID-19 may have an increased risk of hospitalization in intensive care and receive a ventilator, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The new data released (Wednesday) suggests a different level of risk for pregnant patients than previously indicated by previous data,” said Dr. Christopher Zahn, vice president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in a statement.
The overall risk of an ICU stay or ventilation remains low, Zahn said. And, more importantly, “pregnant patients do not appear to have an increased risk of death associated with COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant patients in the same age group,” he said.
The CDC data comes from a recently published study of thousands of pregnant patients with COVID-19.
About a third of pregnant women with COVID-19 were hospitalized, compared to 6% of non-pregnant women with COVID-19, the study found.
In the United States, about 10,000 pregnant women have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 26 have died, according to the CDC. Approximately 3,000 were hospitalized.
The Alabama Department of Public Health does not publish Alabama coronavirus case numbers, but it tracks the underlying medical conditions for confirmed deaths. As of June 26, none of the 887 Alabamians who died from COVID-19 were pregnant.
A small number of pregnant patients with COVID-19 in Alabama have had conditions severe enough to be placed in intensive care units, said Dr. Alan Tita, director of the UAB UAB Center for Reproductive Health and professor of medicine maternal-fetal at the UAB.
He said he hasn’t noticed that pregnant patients are more likely than others in their age group to be admitted to the ICU or put on ventilators, but the small number makes it difficult to see patterns at the state level.
“Pregnant women have had severe (COVID-19 cases), but saying that it is more serious than what we see in the general population of reproductive age is not something that has affected us,” he said. The new data warrants further scrutiny, he said, but it’s not a complete surprise. During the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, pregnant women had more severe infections than non-pregnant women, she said.
He said there has not been enough evidence to show that the coronavirus passes from mother to baby in the womb, although there have been cases of babies contracting the disease.
At this time, Tita said that pregnant women should take all possible precautions to avoid coronavirus infection, including wearing masks in public, social distancing, hand washing and disinfecting when possible. Don’t skip prenatal appointments with the obstetrician, she said, and use telehealth visits when recommended.
“It is a very distressing situation,” he said, “and this is something we will continue to investigate to see if there is any indication to change the current (medical) recommendations for pregnant women.”
He emphasized that a pregnant patient is still unlikely to have to be ventilated or placed in the ICU for COVID-19.
“The bottom line is that everyone should do everything possible to avoid this,” he said. “Do everything in your power to prevent a COVID-19 infection by following CDC guidelines, whether you are pregnant or not.”
