Seven unvaccinated pregnant women with COVID on ventilators at an Alabama hospital

UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, announced on Friday that it had admitted 39 pregnant women unvaccinated against COVID-19 in August. Ten of the women are currently in the hospital’s intensive care unit and seven are on ventilators.

According to the UAB, two COVID-positive women died while pregnant in hospital. Six other women with COVID lost their babies during their second trimester, and three more lost their babies during their third trimester.

Like all hospitals in the state, UAB Hospital has seen a huge increase in the number of new admissions due to the rapid spread of the Delta variant across the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Delta variant accounts for more than 93% of COVID-19 cases nationwide.

UAB Hospital issued a statement regarding its COVID cases on Friday, noting that it is currently seeing a record number of pregnant women hospitalized with COVID-19.

“Really, we’ve never had this number of pregnant women in my intensive care unit,” said Dr. Steve Stigler, director of the intensive medical care unit at UAB Hospital.

“It’s alarming,” Stigler continued. “In a typical month, we may have one or two pregnant women who require our care in a medical intensive care unit, but these are very rare circumstances.”

UAB Hospital also recently hosted a virtual chat with some of the facility’s doctors that the hospital posted on YouTube on August 18. During the interview, doctors discussed pregnancy and vaccinations, noting that pregnant women are now recommended to be vaccinated against COVID. if they had not done so before their pregnancy.

Healthcare workers also explained how they were forced to induce labor in some cases. Some women in intensive care had to give birth as early as week 26 of pregnancy, that is, eleven weeks before they were considered to have reached full term.

“Almost all of these women give birth preterm, not because they are working preterm, but because we are having a preterm birth because the virus is doing so much damage to these women,” said Dr Akila Subramaniam, partner. professor of maternal and fetal medicine division of UAB, said during the virtual discussion.

“If a mom is not oxygenating her body well, she is not oxygenating the baby well either. This is what can cause us to give birth,” said Dr Audra Williams, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and of Gynecology at UAB. “And there are a lot of risks associated with prematurity – long-term neurological or gastrointestinal complications, among others. It’s not just the acute risk of COVID infection these babies face, but the long-term, lifelong risk.

The CDC reports that only 23 percent of pregnant women in the country have been vaccinated. None of the pregnant women currently hospitalized in the ICU of UAB hospital are vaccinated.

“The vaccine is safe for pregnant women regardless of the trimester they are in, and it is safe for nursing mothers,” Subramaniam said. “We can say for sure, yes, these vaccines are safe for women and their babies.”

Alabama currently has the lowest vaccination rate in the United States, with about 45 percent of its population fully vaccinated.