Pregnant women four times more likely to be infected with COVID-19

A new study has suggested that pregnant women are four times more likely to be infected with covid-19 than the general population.

Pregnant women are much more likely to be exposed to the coronavirus than the general population, a new study suggests.

The study published in the journal Science Immunology found that more than six percent of pregnant women in Philadelphia had  antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the virus.

That’s four-fold the number of people in the City of Brotherly Love who also generated an immune response to the virus.

Daily Mail reports that the team, from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, says the findings raise questions about whether or not pregnant women have a different immune response to COVID-19.

Co-lead author Dr Scott Hensley, an associate professor of Microbiology at Perelman, said in a statement, “Pregnant women are fairly representative of community exposure, and these data provide more evidence, on top of what we already know with COVID-19, that health and socio-economic equity are inextricably linked. Hopefully, this will help lead to policies that address these inequities.”

For the study, published in the journal Science Immunology, they looked at 1,293 women who gave birth between April 4 and June 3 at Pennsylvania Hospital and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

The team then tested the women for coronavirus antibodies that bind to the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter and infect human cells.

Researchers say the antibody test had an estimated 100 percent sensitivity rate and a 98.9 percent specificity rate.

This means the test would show no few positives and very few false negative.