by: jason herring
more pregnant women are ending up in alberta emergency rooms and intensive-care units due to covid-19 as case rates surge across the province.
according to university of calgary researchers who collect data on novel coronavirus infection among pregnant women, there were 25 new cases of covid-19 among expectant mothers in the past week. fourteen of them needed emergency room care and two are currently in the icu, including one woman who is on a ventilator.
“at the end of june, beginning of july, when things had settled down a bit, we were seeing maybe three new cases a day, or five new cases a week,” said dr. verena kuret, section head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the u of c.
“and (in the third wave) and now, because it’s a variant, it seems to be hitting people even harder than before.”
alberta’s latest surge in covid-19 cases is driven by the ultra-contagious delta variant, which is now dominant in the province. the variant is spreading primarily among unvaccinated albertans, with the vast majority of severe illness in the province occurring in those who have not been immunized against the virus.
that holds true for pregnant women, too, kuret said. she said full immunization data on pregnant women currently experiencing severe covid-19 illness is unknown, but those who got sick with the virus in the third wave had not received a shot.