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The coronavirus is wreaking havoc among pregnant women and fetuses in Mississippi. Authorities said on Wednesday that the state’s stillbirth rate has doubled since pandemic started last year.
Mississippi state health official Dr Thomas Dobbs told a live-streamed news conference on Wednesday that while “COVID is particularly dangerous and problematic for pregnant women,” it can also be ” fatal to the baby in the womb “.
“With COVID, we’ve seen the fetal death rate double, or the baby’s death in the womb after 20 weeks,” Dobbs said. “It was a real tragedy.”
Dobbs said there have been 72 fetal deaths in the state caused by COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, not counting miscarriages that may have occurred before the 20-week gestation mark, which is “Twice the base rate of what would be expected.”
In the past year, there have also been seven pediatric deaths in the state due to COVID-19, most recently including a baby under a year old.
“It’s a number of tragedies that would unfortunately be preventable at this time,” Dobbs said.
Officials also said there was “an increase in deaths among pregnant women.” As of March 2020, more than 1,500 pregnant people in the state have been diagnosed with COVID-19, as have more than 76,900 children under the age of 17.
“We are still at the heart of Delta ascend. Unfortunately, we’ve seen quite a few pregnant women failing to survive COVID in recent weeks, ”Dobbs said. “Currently, we are investigating eight reports of pregnant women who have died in the past few weeks, all unvaccinated. “
Some of the women who died were able to deliver by Caesarean section, officials said.
The majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state, Dobbs said, are among those that are not vaccinated. According to state data, only 40% of Mississippi’s total population have been fully immunized, one of the lowest rates in the country.
In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The agency said research shows unvaccinated pregnant people are at “increased risk of serious illness and pregnancy complications from COVID-19,” and those who are vaccinated are not at increased risk. of miscarriage.
CDC data shows that less than a quarter of all pregnant women in the United States are at least partially vaccinated by early September.
“The CDC encourages all people who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant and those who are breastfeeding to get vaccinated to protect themselves from COVID-19,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement Aug. 11. “The vaccines are safe and effective. , and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible Delta variant and see severe consequences of COVID-19 in unvaccinated pregnant people. “
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