COVID-19 during pregnancy means 10 times higher risk of ICU admission, Canadian data suggests
CBC
When Alex Carnio tested positive for the coronavirus in early August while pregnant with twins, she didn't anticipate how quickly her illness would progress.
The 28-year-old Kelowna, B.C., resident wasn't yet vaccinated, but aside from experiencing a higher-risk pregnancy, she has typically been healthy, with no underlying medical conditions.
Even so, her initially mild symptoms worsened within days.
"I started having chest pain, unable to really breathe easily, I started not being able to keep any liquids down," Carnio recalled. "That's when I knew, on about day six, that I needed to go to the hospital."
She wound up hospitalized briefly, went home for a day, then started struggling to just stand up. After heading back to her local emergency department, she was admitted to a COVID-19 isolation ward.
"I was woken up by a nurse in the middle of the night who said my oxygen was getting a little bit concerningly low, so they put me on oxygen for two days — and that was something shocking to me," Carnio said.
But her experience isn't surprising to Canadian researchers who've been tracking the impact of COVID-19 during pregnancy, with data suggesting people who are pregnant face significantly higher risks of serious illness requiring hospitalization, ICU admission, or life support.
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