NPR: Pregnant people who contract COVID-19 are at a higher risk for death

08 Mar NPR: Pregnant people who contract COVID-19 are at a higher risk for death

By: ADRIAN FLORIDO
NPR

Adrian Florido speaks to Boettcher Scholar Dr. Torri Metz, from University of Utah Health, about the dangers of being pregnant and unvaccinated for COVID-19

New information is starting to come out about the effects of COVID-19 on pregnancy. And a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that pregnant mothers infected by the virus are at greater risk of developing serious complications or even dying during pregnancy. Dr. Torri Metz is an associate professor at the University of Utah Health and one of the study’s authors, and she joins us now. Welcome.

TORRI METZ: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

FLORIDO: Tell us more about what your report found.

METZ: What we did was evaluate if SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy was associated with worse outcomes for moms. And more specifically, we looked at death or really serious morbidity from obstetric complications. The – such complications that we looked at were having high blood pressure in pregnancy, having a postpartum hemorrhage or bleeding after pregnancy or having an infection other than SARS-CoV-2, so for having wound infection or something that happened after your delivery. And what we found is that those women who had SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy did have a higher risk of having this really serious morbidity or dying during the pregnancy. And when we say serious morbidity, it wasn’t just having those conditions. But it was really having complications from those conditions.