Pregnant women who were infected with Covid-19 when they gave birth to their children were almost twice as likely stillbirth As healthy women who did not have Covid, according to a study released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control, which examined more than 1.2 million births in the United States from March 2020 to September 2021.
While stillbirths were generally rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of all births, 1.26 percent of 21,653 women with Covid experienced a stillbirth, compared with 0.64 percent of women without Covid. Even after adjustments to control for differences between groups, women with Covid were 1.9 times more likely than healthy women to have a stillbirth.
The risk of stillbirth was higher for women with Covid since the delta variable predominated: While the risk of stillbirth in women with Covid was 1.5 times higher than in healthy women before July, when it became delta dominant, it was four. Times are higher from July to September. Up to 2.7 percent of deliveries to women with Covid were stillbirths during the study period, while delta was dominant.
“There have been reports of increased risks, but stillbirths are difficult to study because they are fortunately rare,” said Dr. Dennis Jamieson, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Emory Healthcare. “This is some of the strongest evidence of increased risk and arguably the strongest data pointing to risks specifically associated with Delta.”
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