Covid-19 has a significant impact on pregnant women in the country since, according to data from the federal Ministry of Health (SSA), six out of 10 deaths in this sector of the population, at the beginning of 2021, it was because of the virus.
During the first epidemiological week of 2021, which runs between January 2 and 7, there were 31 deaths of pregnant women; of them 19 (61.2%) were due to Covid-19.
The SSA also reported in the first report of the year on maternal deaths that there were two other deaths that were probably caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
The most frequent causes of death after Covid-19 were: respiratory system disease complicating pregnancy, childbirth and recovery time after delivery (three cases); as well as sepsis and other infections during pregnancy recovery (1); tuberculosis (1); and “tumor of uncertain behavior of the uterus (1)”.
In addition to this, the SSA reported another four deaths of pregnant women who still did not have a classification of their cause.
The number of deaths of pregnant women registered during the first epidemiological week of 2021 is the highest for a similar period in the last eight years.
Vulnerability
The epidemiologist at UNAM, Guadalupe Soto, commented in an interview that according to the United States health system and the World Health Organization, pregnant women are at greater risk from Covid-19 than the general population.
The member of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine of UNAM indicated that pregnant women have some affectations in the immune system, which makes them more vulnerable to the virus.
“It decreases the (immune) response precisely so that the baby can grow and develop within the mother, the immune system has to respond in an inhibitory way so as not to attack it, so that there are no abortion problems, then this conditions the pregnant woman at a certain risk ”, he said.
Dr. Soto added that pregnant women have another risk, which occurs in the third trimester of pregnancy, a period in which “most of the deaths from Covid have occurred in Mexico (in that sector of the population).”
“Physiologically everything is compressed, let’s say (…) and this includes the lungs, in such a way that the lung capacity decreases in the pregnant woman, so when she is in the third trimester, the baby is large, and she becomes infected with Covid ( the mother), it has been seen that she has a higher risk of complications, of reaching pneumonia and in addition to having to be admitted to Intensive Care Units and even intubated, ”he emphasized.
Other risk factors for pregnant women, Dr. Soto mentioned, are poverty and late attention to infection.
“A condition that I saw in the information from the Ministry of Health is that pregnant women are taking four days, once the symptoms are installed, to seek medical attention, then this complicates the situation even more,” he warned.
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