A senior medical official has revealed that more than 1,000 pregnant women in the twin-island republic have contracted COVID-19 since the first case was confirmed there almost two years ago.

Dr Adesh Sirjusingh, director of the Directorate of Women’s Health at the Ministry of Health, said during a news conference that 1,181 pregnant women had contracted the virus with the majority of the cases being community acquired.

According to Sirjusingh, 58 cases of pregnant women contracting the virus were recorded in 2020, 1,101 last year, and 22 so far this year.

He said the majority of the patients were getting infected in their homes, when they are out doing their normal business and in the workplace, much as has been the case for the 102,024 total confirmed cases in the Caribbean nation.

PREGNANCY A RISK EVENT DURING PANDEMIC

“Of these persons, two per cent has been hospitalised, a smaller number ended up in the High Dependency Unit (HDU), some went to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), we actually have patients there now, and since the start of this year we’ve had one additional maternal death in the post-partum period, added to the five I would have mentioned before, so we now have six confirmed maternal deaths associated with COVID-19.”

Warning that the pandemic has rendered pregnancy a high-risk state, Sirjusingh warned that most of the critically ill cases are women who are not vaccinated.

“Preterm birth is a common complication of COVID-19 infection in pregnancy,” Sirjusingh said as he noted that a new-born baby who died as a result of prematurity was a case of mother to child transmission.

Sirjusingh said both the Sinopharm and Pfizer vaccines have been approved for breastfeeding mothers and the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for pregnant women in their second and third trimester.

Up to Monday (January 17), there were 1,084 vaccinations started during pregnancy while 675 women who have started their vaccination prior to pregnancy, have since completed it during pregnancy.