Pregnant Women Suffer Severe COVID-19 Outcomes, With 17% Hospitalised, Fauci Says

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Pregnant women who contract COVID-19 face an elevated risk of life-threatening outcomes, with about 17 percent requiring hospitalisation, while few if any women vaccinated during pregnancy suffered severe adverse reactions, according to data from the past 18 months cited by Biden's coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci on Thursday.

"If you look at [the] total number of cases of pregnant women with COVID -19 from January 2020 to August 2021, there have been about 110,000 cases, about 19,000 hospitalisations and 131 deaths", Fauci told reporters at a White House pandemic task-force briefing.

In contrast, data from 35,000 pregnant vaccine recipients who participated in daily health check-ups with the cellphone-based V-safe system, "there were no obvious safety signals among pregnant women" who received the two-jab Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, Fauci said.

Slides accompanying Fauci's speech showed 109,773 pregnant women contracting COVID-19 from 22 January 2020 to 23 August 2021, of which 18,639 (17 percent) were hospitalised. By comparison, data on a CDC website shows hospitalisation rates for all people aged 18-49 of about 6 percent.

Looking at immune responses for pregnant and lactating woman, vaccine benefits include potent antibody and T-cell responses that protect against a number of COVID-19 variants, while also protecting newborns through antibodies passed to the infants in breast milk, Fauci said.