COVID-19 Infects Pregnant Women More, Easier to Spread in Crowded Homes, Study Says

A New York City study recently presented a thrice higher-risk of contagion among pregnant women who live in neighborhoods with the most crowded homes. Other than this, unemployment and poverty also showed to increase the possibility of infection.

Medical experts say that COVID-19 can spread when an individual sneezes or coughs when he makes physical contact with another person and touches a surface contaminated with the infection.

Previous studies suggested that shelter has a powerful impact on the transmission of contagions spreading through physical contact, as well as droplets like tuberculosis.

Additionally, Researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, NY, presented a new study that the homing factor has contributed to a greater danger of hospital confinement and death from COVID-19 among families living in the cities' most deprived areas.

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Crowded Home Linked to Risk of Contagion

According to Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons obstetrics and gynecology assistant professor, Dr. Alexander Melamed, who is also the lead researcher, the study showed that "neighborhood socioeconomic status," as well as crowded homes are strongly connected to the risk of contagion.

Dr. Melamed explained that this could be the reason why Hispanic and Black people who live in such communities are excessively at risk of getting infected with the virus.

Dr. Melamed and his colleagues further evaluated COVID-19 contagions among women who resided in the city and gave birth at two New York City hospitals from March 22 to April 21 this year.

This period was the pandemic's peak in the city. An indicated restraint in some other research evaluating the danger of contracting COVID-19 was that testing is frequently limited to ill individuals.

Relatively, over 40 percent of individuals with COVID-19 may not show signs and indications of the virus. Nevertheless, since all women in the newly conducted research went through testing on hospital admissions, its outcome comprises of people who had COVID-19 but were considered "asymptomatic."

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Three Times Higher

The study's researchers cross-linked the home address of the patients with local data and socioeconomic factors from the Department of Planning of New York and the American Community Survey of the US Census Bureau.

With the data of all 396 women included in the research, 17.9 percent or 71 percent tested positive with the virus.

Consequently, the probabilities of contagions were three times higher among women living in communities where the average number of people for every family was considerably high.

The chance of contamination was twice higher in areas with most homes crowding, which the researchers identified as having more than one person per room on average, and areas with considerably high unemployment rates.

The Need for Women to Go Through Counseling

The said research indicated that for the pregnant populace, it might mean having women go through counseling and educating them about the danger of contagion if they are thinking of taking in other members of the family to assist them during pregnancy or postpartum period.

Authors of the study certainly recognize that their research findings may not be applicable for the wider populace, considering the distinct social and biological conditions of pregnant women.

Nevertheless, they firmly believe that their study would offer an added motivation to reduce contagion risk in deprived locations where home crowding is a concern. 

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