Pregnant Coronavirus Patients Have Higher Risk For Death: Study

SEATTLE — A new study led by University of Washington researchers found pregnant women diagnosed with COVID-19 were at significantly higher risk for hospitalization and death. Despite the disproportionate effects, researchers said the majority of women in the study had asymptomatic or mild infections.

In a news release Wednesday, the University of Washington School of Medicine identified three key findings:

• Pregnant women with COVID-19 had a 3.5 times higher rate of associated hospitalization than the similarly aged people who had COVID-19 and were not pregnant.
• The mortality rate was 13 times higher among pregnant mothers than among similarly aged individuals infected with COVID-19 who were not pregnant. This said, most of the pregnant patients with COVID-19 had asymptomatic or mild infections and healthy pregnancies.
• The three women who died of COVID-19 were from minority ethnic groups and had other health conditions such as obesity and hypertension.

To inform the study, researchers monitored 240 expecting mothers with COVID-19 illnesses in Washington state between March and June 2020. Among the group, 24 were hospitalized with complications and three patients died. Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, a UW Medicine obstetrician-gynecologist and lead author of the paper, said the findings were surprising and represented a "shockingly high" mortality rate among pregnant women.

"We are gravely concerned that COVID-19-associated maternal deaths have been massively undercounted nationally and that the impact on pregnant patients, particularly with underlying conditions is greater than currently underappreciated," Adams Waldorf said.

Properly tracking such data is essential, she said, as it informs public health priorities and mitigation efforts and guides decisions on who gets vaccines first. Currently, pregnant women are not among the earliest priority group unless they are eligible in another way, such as employment as a health care worker. Expecting mothers were also not sought out to participate in vaccine trials.

"These results suggest that the exclusion of pregnant patients from COVID-19 vaccine trials was a mistake," Adams Waldorf said. "Here is an important group that is typically highly vulnerable to influenza infections and, yet they were excluded...Pregnant patients should have been given the option to enroll in vaccine trials so that we would better understand vaccine risks and benefits to them."

The UW study was supported by philanthropic donations and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Review the full study via the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, or read more on the UW Medicine website.