2nd wave took heavier toll on pregnant women: Study

NEW DELHI : The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India killed more pregnant women and new mothers as compared to the first, a new study by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has found, underlining the need to vaccinate women in these categories.

The study is due for publication in a medical journal, officials said. It analysed the case fatality rate (CFR) in pregnant and postpartum women and found that it was 5.7% in the second wave as opposed to 0.75 in the first wave. CFR is the proportion of people who die of a disease among the total number of patients diagnosed with the disease. Symptomatic cases were also significantly higher at 28.7% in the second wave as compared to the first when the proportion was 14.2%, says the study based on data from the Covid-19 registry on pregnant and postpartum women.

“The data shows that the severity of disease among this category of patients was higher in the second wave. Data was collated from Nair Hospital in Mumbai for this particular study otherwise there are in all 11 publications based on the registry on pregnant and postpartum women with Covid-19 around 19 study sites,” said Dr Geetanjali Sachdeva, director, ICMR’s National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health.

The analysis of data on nearly 4,000 Covid-positive women for the study was done in the Mumbai-based institute, and it is in the process of being published in the Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. The reason for the drastic increase in deaths and cases is not clear. “Increased severity could be different variants in circulation, but nothing can be said for sure because the whole genome sequencing of positive samples was not done,” Dr Sachdeva added.

The data from the first wave was collated between April 1, 2020, and January 31, 2021; and for the second wave, data was taken from February 1, 2021, till May 14, 2021.

Doctors treating women with Covid-19 also agree that the second wave had a severe impact on pregnant women than what was seen earlier.

Dr Anuradha Kapur, senior director and head of unit, department of gynaecology and obstetrics at Max Hospital in Saket, said a large number of such women caught the infection and became seriously ill.

“When Covid-19 started last year, the (American) CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) issued guidelines that it won’t impact pregnant women much. But this year, it was totally the opposite, and the guidelines had to be changed. In most of the cases, lungs of the patients got compromised, making it difficult to treat them,” Kapur said.

ICMR released a snapshot of the findings on Wednesday and said 2% of the total number of deaths ever since the pandemic began last year was of pregnant women or new mothers. Most of the deaths were due to Covid-19 related pneumonia and respiratory failure.