Unvaccinated Pregnant Women Face Population Health Impacts

According to UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, unvaccinated pregnant women are increasingly hospitalized due to COVID-19, impacting population health.

The study, which analyzed more than 1,500 COVID-19 cases in the Dallas areas since May 2020, portrays the impact of the new COVID-19 variants on the population health of pregnant women.

The research indicates that the proportion of pregnant COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization increased 10 to 15 percent in late August and early September, more than double the percentage of last year before the emergence of the Delta variant.

“This is a concerning trend, and we’re primarily seeing these cases in unvaccinated women,” Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Emily Adhikari, MD, said in a press release.

According to Adhikari, these findings offer the first objective evidence that the case number and severity of the illness in pregnant women increased with the spike in the Delta variant. The study included 1,515 pregnant women with COVID-19 who received care from Parkland Health & Hospital System from May 2020 through September 2021.

Overall, 82 patients had severe cases, including 10 requiring ventilators and two deaths. The proportion of critical cases was around 5 percent in late 2020 and early 2021 and largely nonexistent in February and most of March.

However, the rise in the Delta variant caused a new wave of hospitalizations that peaked in August and early September, including more than a third of COVID-19 cases the week of August 29. UT Southwestern then conducted genetic sequencing that showed that nearly all the local variants sequenced were the Delta strain.

Of the 82 patients hospitalized since May 2020, most were unvaccinated.

Adhikari, the lead author of the study, said that some women fear the vaccine may not be safe during pregnancy, but research has proven that that’s not the case. In addition, pregnant women are at the greatest risk for complications with any type of severe respiratory infection, further stressing the importance of pregnant and lactating women getting vaccinated.

“If they are exposed and infected, they run a higher risk of severe illness from this most recent Delta variant,” said Adhikari, Medical Director of Perinatal Infectious Diseases at Parkland. “Pregnant women should get immunized as soon as possible.”

The study was a collaborative effort with the McDermott Center Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Core, the McDermott Bioinformatics Lab, and UT Southwestern. Adhikari also worked with Helen H. Hobbs, MD, and Jeffrey SoRelle, MD, to develop the research.