Pregnancy a risk factor for COVID-19 among unvaccinated women

Pregnant women who remain unvaccinated from COVID-19 are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19 when compared with unvaccinated nonpregnant women, as reported in a study for the Philippines.

A total of 500 women who had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 were recruited from five national and local hospital research sites. Of these, 267 (53.5 percent) were pregnant, with the median age of gestation being 39 weeks.

The analysis included 352 women (70.4 percent). Most of them preferred to deliver out of the hospital research sites. In total, 29.4 percent of women in the pregnant group and 24.0 percent in the nonpregnant group contracted COVID-19.

More than half of the women in the study resided in the capital city Metro Manila, lived in households, were Catholic, had never smoked or drank alcoholic beverages, had not used illicit drugs, had an O blood type, or had never left the country during the pandemic.

On analysis, the following emerged as significant risk factors for COVID-19: pregnancy (prevalence ratio [PR], 1.184, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.096–1.279), having a white-collar job (PR, 1.123, 95 percent CI, 1.02–1.235), travelling abroad (PR, 1.369, 95 percent CI, 1.083–1.173), and being infected by at least one vaccine-preventable disease (PR, 1.208, 95 percent CI, 1.113–1.310).

On the other hand, several factors exerted a protective effect, namely having graduate-level education (PR, 0.787, 95 percent CI, 0.649–0.954), immunization against a vaccine-preventable disease (PR, 0.795, 95 percent CI, 0.733–0.862), and practicing contraception (PR, 0.889, 95 percent CI, 0.824–0.960).