An­na-Lisa Paul

The Di­rec­tor of Women’s Health, Min­istry of Health (MoH) Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh says preg­nant women are sus­cep­ti­ble to the ad­verse ef­fects of the virus if they are not im­mu­nised.

Re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to preg­nant per­sons over the age of 35; those in their lat­ter half of preg­nan­cy; per­sons who are over­weight and/or suf­fer­ing pa­tients with di­a­betes, high blood pres­sure, heart is­sues or asth­ma - Sir­jus­ingh yes­ter­day said two per cent of this co­hort usu­al­ly end up in In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) or the High De­pen­den­cy Unit (HDU).

Re­fer­ring to the two women who had died af­ter de­liv­er­ing their ba­bies due to com­pli­ca­tions from COVID-19, he re­vealed that since the start of the pan­dem­ic in March 2020, a to­tal of 657 preg­nant women had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Speak­ing dur­ing the MOH’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, he pro­vid­ed a break-down which de­tailed that 58 was record­ed last year; 283 be­tween Jan­u­ary to June 2021; 75 in Ju­ly 2021; 125 in Au­gust 2021; and 116 up to Sep­tem­ber 17.

Sir­jus­ingh said 530 preg­nant women had so far re­ceived their first dose of the Pfiz­er vac­cine.

The Sinopharm vac­cine is ap­proved for breast­feed­ing women but not for those who are preg­nant

In a re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment, the min­istry yes­ter­day an­nounced its ex­pand­ed vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme for preg­nant and breast­feed­ing women.

In a re­lease, the min­istry ad­vised that preg­nant and breast­feed­ing pop­u­la­tions as well as mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic, should take note of the fol­low­ing:

The Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine is ap­proved for breast­feed­ing women, as well as preg­nant women in their 2nd and 3rd trimester of preg­nan­cy. The two-dose regime can be giv­en dur­ing preg­nan­cy or be­gin af­ter de­liv­ery.

The Sinopharm vac­cine is ap­proved for breast­feed­ing women but not for those who are preg­nant.

COVID-19 vac­cine com­bi­na­tion

Of­fi­cials said if a woman re­ceived a first dose of the Sinopharm vac­cine be­fore preg­nan­cy, she should not be giv­en the Pfiz­er vac­cine dur­ing preg­nan­cy as the sec­ond dose.

They said, “She can com­plete the two-dose Sinopharm regime af­ter preg­nan­cy. Clin­i­cians should check for the lat­est guid­ance on this sce­nario.”

“If a woman re­ceived one dose of the As­traZeneca vac­cine be­fore preg­nan­cy, she is el­i­gi­ble for a sin­gle dose of the Pfiz­er vac­cine as her sec­ond dose, once she is in her 2nd or 3rd trimester of preg­nan­cy. A woman will be con­sid­ered to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed two weeks af­ter the sec­ond dose. A third vac­cine dose is not re­quired.”

The min­istry said as sci­en­tif­ic da­ta evolves, this ad­vice may change to in­clude oth­er com­bi­na­tions of vac­cines.

On the is­sue of whether the COVID-19 vac­cines have been ad­verse­ly im­pact­ing the men­stru­al cy­cles of women, Sir­jus­ingh said there had been no clin­i­cal re­port­ing of men­stru­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties from women who took the COVID-19 vac­cine in T&T.

He said, “We haven’t re­ceived any di­rect re­ports of women or health care prac­ti­tion­ers that there has been an in­crease of cas­es be­ing re­port­ed.”

Adding that there were many caus­es of men­stru­al dis­rup­tion, Sir­jus­ingh said cur­rent cir­cum­stances had led to stress­ful times and that if a per­son had no­ticed an un­usu­al change in their cy­cle for any rea­son, they should not hes­i­tate to vis­it their doc­tor for a med­ical check-up