KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For five years be­fore COVID-19, T&T record­ed three or four ma­ter­nal deaths an­nu­al­ly. Now, the coro­n­avirus is caus­ing that fig­ure to spike.

As Di­rec­tor of Women's Health, Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh con­tin­ues to warn that preg­nan­cy puts women at a high risk of de­vel­op­ing se­vere dis­ease; he said the coun­try record­ed more than five ma­ter­nal deaths last year due to COVID-19. Thus far in 2022, one moth­er suf­fered a post­par­tum COVID-19 as­so­ci­at­ed death.

Sir­jus­ingh spoke at the Min­istry of Health's COVID-19 Up­date this morn­ing.

“For the en­tire year of 2021, we had eight ma­ter­nal deaths. Of those, five were as­cribed to hav­ing co-ex­ist­ing COVID-19. The da­ta has al­ready been re­leased, and they were all un­vac­ci­nat­ed. For this year, we have al­ready re­port­ed one ma­ter­nal death. It was al­ready re­port­ed in the news­pa­per, and this was an un­vac­ci­nat­ed pa­tient,” Sir­jus­ingh said.

Up to Jan­u­ary 14th, the Min­istry record­ed 1,181 preg­nant women who de­vel­oped COVID-19. Of that fig­ure, 22 were in Jan­u­ary, while 1,101 oc­curred in 2021. In 2020, the Min­istry record­ed 58. Sir­jus­ingh said most of these women ac­quired COVID-19 via com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion. He said most ex­pec­tant moth­ers, who are crit­i­cal­ly ill, did not take a vac­cine.

“These pa­tients are get­ting in­fect­ed in their homes, when they are out do­ing their nor­mal busi­ness, as well as in their work­places. Of these per­sons, 2 per cent have been hos­pi­tal­ized. A small­er num­ber end­ed up in the High De­pen­den­cy Unit. Some went to the In­ten­sive Care Unit: we ac­tu­al­ly have pa­tients there now. Since the start of this year, we have had one ad­di­tion­al ma­ter­nal death in the post­par­tum pe­ri­od added to the five that I would have men­tioned be­fore.”

He con­firmed that one ba­by died from pre­ma­tu­ri­ty. Doc­tors con­firmed that it was a moth­er-child trans­mis­sion af­ter ear­ly de­liv­ery. They al­so con­firmed six cas­es of moth­er to child trans­mis­sion, where there was one still­birth. Sir­jus­ingh said preterm birth was a more com­mon com­pli­ca­tion of COVID-19 dur­ing preg­nan­cy. The Min­istry is still con­sid­er­ing boost­ers for preg­nant women at the Na­tion­al Im­mu­ni­sa­tion Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­so­ry Group.

In Au­gust 2021, the Min­istry ap­proved the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cine for preg­nant women in their sec­ond and third trimesters. It ap­proved the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech and Sinopharm vac­cines for bread feed­ing moth­ers.

As of Jan­u­ary 17, the Min­istry record­ed 1,084 preg­nant women start­ing their vac­ci­na­tion with 675, who start­ed be­fore preg­nan­cy, com­plet­ing their reg­i­ment dur­ing preg­nan­cy.