NY doctors want all pregnant women to be tested for Covid-19 after many test positive without any symptoms
Most expectant mothers in a New York hospital tested positive for COVID-19 in spite of not showing any symptoms during admission, according to a recent study.
The study which screened all pregnant women, 215 of them, after admitting them found nearly 15% of them did not develop symptoms and yet tested positive. The percentage of those who tested positive and showed symptoms stood at 1.9%
Building on their findings, the study authors call for universal screening of all pregnant women. This could reduce the risk of spread from people who do not develop symptoms and make better care available to them.
The study included 215 expectant mothers who approached the New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center for delivery, between March 22 and April 4, 2020.
As soon the hospitals admitted them, the team tested the women for COVID-19. At that time, only four showed signs while the others looked healthy.
Of the 210 asymptomatic patients, 29 tested positive for the disease, taking the total confirmed cases to 33 among expectant mothers at admission. This means, 29 of the 33 confirmed patients did not show signs of COVID-19 at that time.
However, a few went on to develop symptoms. According to the doctors, three of the 29 women had a fever before discharge. Not all patients are asymptomatic, some of them show a delay in developing them.
They also found that a patient who tested negative earlier began showing signs of the disease after giving birth. She continued to test positive three days after the initial test came back positive.
The authors add that their findings might not hold relevance in regions with low-levels of infection. "Although this prevalence has limited generalizability to geographic regions with lower rates of infection, it underscores the risk of Covid-19 among asymptomatic obstetrical patients," the doctors wrote in there study.
The study has a drawback: false positives, which give out positive results even when a person does not have the disease. The authors said this might underestimate the prevalence of the disease among the expectant mothers.
The New York doctors press the need for universal screening. "The potential benefits of a universal testing approach include the ability to use Covid-19 status to determine hospital isolation practices and bed assignments, inform neonatal care, and guide the use of personal protective equipment. Access to such clinical data provides an important opportunity to protect mothers, babies, and health care teams during these challenging times," they wrote in their study.