RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Some 383 preg­nant women have con­tract­ed COVID-19 since the pan­dem­ic be­gan; how­ev­er, 68 of these in­fec­tions came with­in the last week, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health's Di­rec­tor of Women's Health Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh, who de­scribed the oc­cur­rence as "very alarm­ing".

Not­ing the sen­si­tive na­ture of the in­for­ma­tion, Dr Sir­jus­ingh in­di­cat­ed that there are sev­er­al preg­nant women cur­rent­ly ward­ed in the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU). He added that of all the preg­nant women ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal for COVID-19 treat­ment, ap­prox­i­mate­ly three per cent have end­ed up in the ICU or High De­pen­den­cy Unit (HDU).

To date, there has been one ma­ter­nal death record­ed in a preg­nant woman. He said COVID-19 in­creas­es the risk of com­pli­ca­tions in preg­nan­cy.

"Most of these would have been in the lat­ter stages of preg­nan­cy," he said.

With on­ly 172 preg­nant women be­ing in­oc­u­lat­ed to date since vac­ci­na­tions be­gan for this cat­e­go­ry on Wednes­day 25th Au­gust, Dr Sir­jus­ingh is ap­peal­ing for more women to come for­ward.

"COVID-19 is se­ri­ous in preg­nan­cy. It's not to be tak­en like­ly," he said.

He in­di­cat­ed that over 300,000 preg­nant women have been vac­ci­nat­ed glob­al­ly in coun­tries like the Unit­ed King­dom, Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Eu­rope and to date, there have not been any re­ports of ad­verse re­ac­tions in this cat­e­go­ry.

"When you take the vac­cine, it pro­tects your un­born ba­by as well. There are no dif­fer­ent side ef­fects oth­er than those we’ve al­ready stat­ed when you com­pare a preg­nant woman with the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion," he said.

"We have not seen any ad­verse preg­nan­cy-re­lat­ed out­comes world­wide nor here in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Cit­ing in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies, he said the vac­cine pos­es no threat to the un­born child.

"The vac­cine does not cross the pla­cen­ta. If you're breast­feed­ing the vac­cine does not go in­to the breast milk. The an­ti­bod­ies, how­ev­er, cross the pla­cen­ta and an­ti­bod­ies are ex­cret­ed in the breast milk and give your ba­by some lev­el of pro­tec­tion," he ex­plained.

Dr Sir­jus­ingh said the Min­istry of Health is cur­rent­ly ex­plor­ing the use of the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech's Comir­naty vac­cine in breast­feed­ing moth­ers.

For those con­cerned about any long-term ef­fects of the vac­cine on the un­born ba­by, ICU spe­cial­ist Dr Farah Su­la­man said there is noth­ing to wor­ry about.

"This vac­cine is a non-live vac­cine and gen­er­al­ly non-live vac­cines do not cause long-term ef­fects and it's bro­ken down quick­ly like Dr Sir­jus­ingh said af­ter in­jec­tion, and what re­mains are the an­ti­bod­ies to help you fight in­fec­tion," she said.

Dr Su­la­man is al­so eight months preg­nant and re­ceived her dose of the Pfiz­er vac­cine last week with­out is­sue.