And intensive care doctors have seen an increase in severe cases among unvaccinated pregnant women in recent weeks, NBC News reported.

The CDC reports more than 118,260 cases of COVID-19 in expectant women during the pandemic. With the highly contagious Delta variant striking many younger adults, pregnant individuals are among the casualties. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the loss of 266 pregnancies to stillbirth since the pandemic began. Subramaniam said the usual stillbirth rate is typically 2% at her facility, which treats high-risk pregnancies, but the COVID-associated rate has ranged from 3% to 6% during the pandemic. Most of the women in the stillbirth cases had not been vaccinated, Dobbs said. 'That's quite a number of tragedies that sadly would be preventable,' Dobbs said.Ībout 39% of people in Mississippi are vaccinated, among the lowest vaccination rates in the nation. Thomas Dobbs, the state's health officer, during a news conference. That was twice the number of stillbirths the state would typically see in that time period, said Dr. What is known is that in Mississippi, which already had the highest infant mortality rate in the United States, the state health department identified 72 stillbirths in women who have had COVID-19 during the pandemic. We don't have the numbers to confirm what we perceive that we're seeing,' Subramaniam told NBC News. 'Everything that we're seeing with stillbirths is truly anecdotal. Akila Subramaniam, an associate professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham's Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. But the numbers are too low overall to draw definitive conclusions on whether the COVID cases led to a rise in stillbirths, said Dr. While the number of stillbirths is still very low nationally, doctors in the deep South have noticed increases in stillbirths, NBC News reported.

Akila subramaniam