By New Scientist
and Press Association
Guy Bell/Shutterstock
More than half of pregnant women admitted to UK hospitals with coronavirus were from a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background.
This is according to a study that looked at data from pregnant women admitted to 194 obstetric units in the UK who tested positive for a covid-19 infection between 1 March and 14 April. The study found that, of the 427 pregnant women with covid-19 in hospital during that period, 233 were from BAME backgrounds – that’s 56 per cent. In this group, 103 were from Asian backgrounds, and 90 were black.
The findings require “urgent investigation and explanation”, say Marian Knight at the University of Oxford and her colleagues, who conducted the analysis.
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Most of the women in the study were admitted to hospital in the late second or third trimesters of their pregnancies. Five of the women died, including three who died as a direct result of complications linked to the coronavirus. Ten per cent of the women needed respiratory support in a critical care unit.
Twelve of the 265 babies born in the study tested positive for covid-19 – six of them within 12 hours of being born. However, the study found that most of the infected pregnant women had “good outcomes” and that transmission of coronavirus to infants was “uncommon”.
To see if population density might explain why some ethnicities are more likely than others to be admitted to hospital with coronavirus during pregnancy, the researchers also ran their analysis after excluding data from major urban centres. However, they still found a high proportion of women from black and other minority groups among those admitted to hospital.
Last week, a report from Public Health England revealed that black people are between two and three times more likely to be diagnosed with coronavirus than white people, and death rates from covid-19 are highest among people from black and Asian ethnic groups.
The new study found that 69 per cent of the pregnant women were overweight or obese, and a third had pre-existing health conditions. It is possible that weight and health issues may explain some of the coronavirus infection and death disparities seen between white people and minority groups, however some other studies suggest these factors don’t fully explain the difference.
Journal reference: British Medical Journal, DOI: 10.1136 bmj.m2107
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