Women who gave birth within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test died at a significantly higher rate than their healthy counterparts, finds a Scottish study yesterday in Nature Medicine.
They were also more prone to poor birth outcomes, even if they weren't severely ill, according to a US study in The Lancet Digital Health.Vaccine uptake low in pregnant womenIn the first study, University of Edinburgh and Public Health Scotland researchers analyzed national, population-level data on COVID-19 vaccine uptake and SARS-CoV-2 infections in pregnant women.From the launch of a COVID-19 vaccination program in Scotland on Dec 8, 2020, to Oct 31, 2021, 18,457 pregnant women received 25,917 doses.
Uptake was much lower in this group than among nonpregnant women ages 18 to 44 years, with 32.3% giving birth in October 2021 having received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, or AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, compared with 77.4% of other women.There were 4,950 COVID-19 infections among pregnant women.
The death rate among women who delivered babies within 28 days of a COVID-19 diagnosis was 22.6 per 1,000 births (95% confidence interval [CI], 12.9 to 38.5), compared with the pandemic background rate of 5.6 per 1,000 births (95% CI, 5.1 to 6.2).A total of 2,364 babies were born to COVID-infected women.