Pregnant women who contract COVID-19 are at a higher risk for complications or death.
This study was conducted by the University of Utah.
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What is the risk?
Pregnant women who become infected with COVID-19 are almost 40% more likely to suffer from serious complications or die during pregnancy. This is in comparison to pregnant women who have not contracted the virus.
The study found that this created an increased risk for preterm birth and newborn admission to the intensive care unit.
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How did they do the research?
The results were based on a review of 14,104 patients. They were spread among 17 different U.S. hospitals between March 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020.
This data collection period was before the outbreak of both Delta and Omicron variants. This data is based on the original SARS-CoV-2 strain.
Of the patients reviewed, only 2,352 pregnant women became infected with COVID-19 during that span of time.
About 80% of infections happened during the third trimester of pregnancy. This made it difficult to “evaluate the effects the virus has in early pregnancy.”
Future studies will likely look into long-term health effects and additional factors like vaccination status, pregnancy outcomes, and COVID-19 variants.
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