Greatly increased maternal mortality rates in first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic

In the USA, maternal deaths are defined as occurring in "people who died within 42 days after pregnancy." Here is the link to the free online abstract of that news article:

jamanetwork.com...

These are stunning percentages. For example, an overall increased maternal death rate of 33.3%, increased maternal death rate of 74.2% among Hispanics, 40.2% among non-Hispanic Black individuals, and 17.2% among non-Hispanic White individuals. This analysis was performed on data from the US National Center for Health Statistics.

The authors wrote, "Changes in maternal deaths during the pandemic may involve conditions directly related to COVID-19 (respiratory or viral infection) or conditions exacerbated by COVID-19 or other health care disruptions (diabetes or cardiovascular disease) but could not be discerned from the data."

In general, pregnancy always produces some changes (reduction) in the human immune system of the person who goes on to give birth. If so, then these people may have been at greatly increased risk of becoming infected by COVID-19 after returning home with their child/children.

a reply to: Uphill

For example, an overall increased maternal death rate of 33.3%, increased maternal death rate of 74.2% among Hispanics, 40.2% among non-Hispanic Black individuals, and 17.2% among non-Hispanic White individuals. 

This is shocking. I wonder if non-pregnant Hispanics have such high numbers with either contracting Covid or the Covid vaccines in general. Or if it's specific to pregnant women only. I would expect the rates of miscarriage would also be sky high. Don't know how or where to confirm this tho.

This is on top of the massive increase in still borns and miscarriages.

a reply to: v1rtu0s0

There was a slight increase, rather than a "massive" one, and it began before the vax was introduced. It's also global rather than isolated to the US.

It you read "Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternal and perinatal outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis" (Lancet: 09,06, 2021.06.01) you'll see that this has been well covered by both direct and meta study.

Global maternal and fetal outcomes have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase in maternal deaths, stillbirth, ruptured ectopic pregnancies, and maternal depression. Some outcomes show considerable disparity between high-resource and low-resource settings. There is an urgent need to prioritise safe, accessible, and equitable maternity care within the strategic response to this pandemic and in future health crises.

To sum things up, they concluded that there were likely several causes, with the most significant being that ante natal care declined dramatically during the pandemic. Leading to preventable deaths and harm to both mothers and babies. The decline was worse in poor countries, and among the poor in wealthy countries.

a reply to: Boadicea -- Across Los Angeles county the COVID-19 rates are all elevated across the Latino community since 2000 in all categories. With our recent county increases in COVID-19 diagnosis, luckily more people are starting to wear masks again. At the Starbucks we go to, almost the entire (Latino) staff there now wears some sort of mask.

originally posted by: Uphill
a reply to: Boadicea -- Across Los Angeles county the COVID-19 rates are all elevated across the Latino community since 2000 in all categories. With our recent county increases in COVID-19 diagnosis, luckily more people are starting to wear masks again. At the Starbucks we go to, almost the entire (Latino) staff there now wears some sort of mask.

Why? Masks don't work.

a reply to: Uphill -- First, the answer to the mask debate depends heavily on what flavor of social media one is familiar with, as documented thoroughly in the new book by a US reporter, The Chaos Machine: the inside story of how social media rewired our minds, by Max Fisher.

Second, in the USA, it turns out that one's pandemic era access to specialty medical care depends on one's ... zipcode? Link:

www.npr.org...

If so, the substantially increased US maternity death rate during the first five months of the COVID-19 pandemic may be exceptional because US postal zipcodes exacerbate race/ethnic disparities in US access to medical care. Keep in mind, however, that in the US, OB/GYN is a medical specialty, not a sub-specialty. (The 4 US main specialties are medicine, surgery, OB-GYN and psychiatry.)

originally posted by: Uphill
a reply to: Uphill -- First, the answer to the mask debate depends heavily on what flavor of social media one is familiar with, as documented thoroughly in the new book by a US reporter, The Chaos Machine: the inside story of how social media rewired our minds, by Max Fisher.

Second, in the USA, it turns out that one's pandemic era access to specialty medical care depends on one's ... zipcode? Link:

www.npr.org...

If so, the substantially increased US maternity death rate during the first five months of the COVID-19 pandemic may be exceptional because US postal zipcodes exacerbate race/ethnic disparities in US access to medical care. Keep in mind, however, that in the US, OB/GYN is a medical specialty, not a sub-specialty. (The 4 US main specialties are medicine, surgery, OB-GYN and psychiatry.)

Did you really use the Bill Gates funded NPR as a source?