As COVID-19 cases continue to increase in the region, doctors are seeing spikes of cases in pregnant women.
At Barnes-Jewish Hospital, about 45% of pregnant women were positive for COVID-19 last week, according to a statement from a hospital representative.
“This baby is going to be born into a world full of COVID and variants like omicron and would have no other protection because children under the age of 5 aren’t eligible for the vaccine yet,”
“We’re seeing really high rates of pregnant people like we are seeing in the general population, that we are admitting more pregnant people, but they can come in for a number of reasons,” Dr. Ebony Carter, who specializes in Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Obstetrics & Gynecology, said.
During this wave of Omicron, pregnant women are much more likely to be COVID positive when they come to the hospital to deliver than when health care providers were dealing with the Delta variant, according to a statement from a hospital representative.
“My leading thought on why this is happening is vaccination rates,” Carter said.
“Patients have been really hesitant to get vaccinated during pregnancy because they’re understandably terrified, but this infectious wave of Omicron is happening, which leaves pregnant people vulnerable. The problem with this is COVID-19 has been terrible on pregnant people because the immune system dampens down its response to not treat a baby as an invader, which is great for baby but not for mom because moms can get serious flu or COVID-19 infections.”
At least 66% of adults in the St. Louis region are vaccinated, but those numbers drop down to the thirties for those who are pregnant, according to Dr. Carter.
“If you look at pregnant patients with COVID, the risk of pre-term birth is significantly higher, C-sections and needing to be admitted into the intensive care unit or needing a tube to breathe for you are higher,” she said. “COVID infections can be severe, but I don’t want to scare my patients due to the low number of patients this has happened to.”
Dr. Carter talked about how she reminds pregnant patients the COVID vaccine and the booster has been shown to be safe and effective in preventing severe illness and death in pregnant women.
“My patients tell me, ‘Oh, I’ll wait to get the booster after my pregnancy,’ and I tell them the best time to get the booster was yesterday,” she said. It has been proven to be more effective than the two-shot series alone; it’s about 90% effective at keeping you from being hospitalized.”
According to a hospital representative, getting COVID when unvaccinated dramatically increases the risk of severe illness and death for pregnant women and increases the chances of pre-term birth or delivering a stillborn baby.
Recent studies have determined women who received a COVID booster had a higher likelihood of passing on protective antibodies to their babies.
“I think that the other thing I hear from my patients is they would never want to do anything that would harm their baby when vaccination is the best thing that you could do for your baby,” she said.
“This baby is going to be born into a world full of COVID and variants like Omicron and would have no other protection because children under the age of 5 aren’t eligible for the vaccine yet, so the only way that the baby can come into the world with some protection is if mom gets vaccinated, your body mounts an immune response, and research has shown that those antibodies get passed through the umbilical cord to the baby.”
Also, Carter addressed the issues Black women have about getting vaccinated during pregnancy. Black pregnant women die at a disproportionate rate when compared to other races. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women.
“I think there is an issue with vaccine equity and uptake,” Carter said. “The research in the medical system has not done right by Black patients in many instances, so I don’t blame people at all for being skeptical of the vaccine and what it might do, but what we see is the uptick in vaccinations among Black patients has been lower and then you see the outcomes in terms of disease has been much worse, which is not solely because of race but also the social determinants and factors that go behind it.”
Carter said the best course of action to continue combatting COVID-19 is getting vaccinated.
