RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try has record­ed sev­en ma­ter­nal deaths of which four were from COVID-19. This is ac­cord­ing to the Di­rec­tor in the Di­rec­torate of Women's Health, Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh.

This rep­re­sents an in­crease in ma­ter­nal fa­tal­i­ties lo­cal­ly which, since 2017, stood at rough­ly four.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pre­sent­ed by Dr Sir­jus­ingh on Mon­day, 1,002 preg­nant women con­tract­ed the dis­ease lo­cal­ly as of De­cem­ber 3, 2021. The ma­jor­i­ty of these in­fec­tions, 944, oc­curred this year. A to­tal of 279 of these cas­es were record­ed since Oc­to­ber, dur­ing this third wave of in­fec­tions.

Dr Sir­jus­ingh added that there have been four in­stances of trans­mis­sion from a COVID-19 pos­i­tive moth­er to the child.

Out­side of these in­stances, he said there have been sev­er­al oc­ca­sions where COVID-19 led to com­pli­ca­tions in preg­nan­cy such as pre-term births and still births.

Dr Sir­jus­ingh re­mind­ed women that be­ing preg­nant places them at high-risk for an ad­verse out­come from COVID-19 which is why it is im­por­tant they get vac­ci­nat­ed. He said the ma­jor­i­ty of the cas­es of preg­nant women con­tract­ing COVID-19 were among the un­vac­ci­nat­ed.