Vanderbilt: 'Alarming' number of pregnant COVID-19 patients hospitalized last month

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — Vanderbilt University Medical Center treated an "alarming" number of pregnant COVID-19 patients last month, a representative tells FOX 17 News.

In August, Vanderbilt says they had 39 pregnant patients hospitalized with active COVID-19 infections. 10 of those patients were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Currently, the hospital has four pregnant and postpartum patients in the ICU with COVID-19. Of those, one patient is still pregnant and the remaining three patients recently underwent emergency deliveries due to the severity of their symptoms.

The doctor who oversees many of the cases says some of the hospital's pregnant patients with COVID-19 either lost their pregnancies or delivered early.

“With this delta surge of COVID, we have been experiencing a high number of unvaccinated, pregnant females who are becoming critically ill with COVID pneumonia,” said Todd Rice, MD, associate professor of Medicine in Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and director of the Medical ICU. “These patients get very sick very quickly and end up needing a ventilator or ECMO. A significant proportion of them end up losing their pregnancies, and if they don’t, their babies have to be delivered early, which causes a number of issues for the baby due to being delivered prematurely."

Jennifer Thompson, MD, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Maternal Fetal Medicine, echoed Rice's concerns and has been encouraging pregnant women to consider getting vaccinated against the virus.

"The risks associated with COVID and pregnancy are significant: an increased risk of hospitalization, increased need for ICU care, increased risk of needing mechanical ventilation or ECMO, and an increased risk of death. Those risks are anywhere between two and 15 times greater than similar-aged, non-pregnant people with COVID. For pregnant people who have other comorbidities such as obesity, heart disease or diabetes, the risks are even further increased," said Thompson.“Potential risks from the vaccine — which is safe and effective in preventing severe disease — pale in comparison to the risks of COVID infection during pregnancy. I strongly recommend the vaccine to anyone who is pregnant.”

According to the CDC, doctors have seen the number of pregnant patients infected with COVID-19 rise in the past several weeks.

"The increased circulation of the highly contagious Delta variant, the low vaccine uptake among pregnant people, and the increased risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications related to COVID-19 infection among pregnant people make vaccination for this population more urgent than ever," the CDC wrote.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says COVID-19 places pregnant women at an increased risk of severe complications or even death. As of the end of July, the CDC reported that only around 22 percent of pregnant women nationwide had received one or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

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