The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has made a strong case for vaccinating pregnant and lactating women in view of the significantly higher case fatality rate among them in the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic compared with the first wave, according to its study which compared the pregnant and post-partum women during the first wave i.e, April 1, 2020-January 31, 2021 and during the second wave i.e, February 1, 2021-May 14, 2021.
“The case fatality rate(CFR) among pregnant women and post-partum women was 5.7 per cent (22/387) during the second wave, which was significantly higher compared to the scenario encounter in the first wave with CFR 0.7 per cent (8/1143),” ICMR tweeted on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, symptomatic cases were also double the cases registered in the first wave at 28.7 per cent among pregnant and lactating women, as per the ICMR’s study.
Besides this, the total number of maternal deaths during both the waves of pandemic were 2 per cent of which majority were due to Covid-19 pneumonia and respiratory failure, the study further stated.