Pregnant women already have enough to worry about without the coronavirus. But doctors and public health officials say with the new delta variant, women who are, or have recently been pregnant, are at a higher risk of getting very sick from the virus.

The delta variant, which is more contagious than other variants, is causing coronavirus cases to spike across the United States.

“Outside of COVID, most days we don’t have pregnant women in the ICU, or if we do it’s maybe one, maybe two, and that’s only intermittently. Now we’re seeing more than a handful at any given time,” Duke University OB-GYN Dr. Geeta Swamy said. “It certainly is more than we would ever expect, and we’re seeing more now with the delta variant than we were seeing at the beginning of the pandemic.”

Swamy spoke with reporters this week about the risks to pregnant women during pregnancy and the safety of the vaccines.

Pregnant women are at just as high a risk of catching the new delta variant of the coronavirus as anyone else in their community. But if they do get COVID-19, they’re at higher risk of developing severe symptoms that could send them to the hospital or even the intensive care unit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The delta variant is much more contagious than earlier iterations of the virus, public health officials say, and that means that more pregnant women could get the virus.

“Pregnancy causes changes in the body that could make it easier to get very sick from respiratory viruses like the one that causes COVID-19,” according to the CDC.

If a pregnant woman does contract the coronavirus, they are also at a higher risk for preterm birth, the CDC said.

In Mississippi, the state’s Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said stillbirths have doubled. He said there have been 72 stillbirths in the state since the beginning of the pandemic, twice the normal rate. 

“With COVID, we've seen a doubling of the rate of fetal demise, or the death of the baby in the womb after 20 weeks," Dobbs said during a news conference this week.

"We're still in the thick of the delta surge,” he said. “Sadly, we've seen a pretty significant number of pregnant women not survive COVID in recent weeks."

He said Mississippi is investigating reports of eight pregnant women who died from the virus in recent weeks. All of the women were unvaccinated, Dobbs said.

Of babies born to women with COVID-19, about 13% of the infants test positive for the coronavirus, according to CDC data.

“Pregnant women, I would say, they frequently put their developing fetus ahead of the concerns for themselves and their own health. We really try to talk to pregnant women and their families about the fact that in order to have a healthy baby, we really need to make sure we also have a healthy mother,” Swamy said.

She said pregnant women should get vaccinated, and they should continue to wash their hands and wear a mask.

“I think as we know with many pregnant women, about 40% of all births in this country occur to women as their first pregnancy. So that means the 60% probably have other children at home and are potentially care-takers of other children. With children in this country having gone back to school now, we are seeing higher incidences of COVID infection among children,” Swamy said.

Only about a quarter of pregnant women in the United States are vaccinated for the coronavirus, according to Duke.

“From a safety or effectiveness standpoint, both for the mother and baby, really we recommend that women should get the vaccine as early as they can. Given the complications related to COVID, infections are more likely to occur with later, advancing pregnancy, we really recommend women get the vaccine as early as they can,” Swamy said.

If a pregnant woman is vaccinated, she could pass that immunity to her baby, according to recent research from the University of Michigan.

“We now have evidence that antibodies created by the vaccine can travel through the placenta to the baby before birth and also during lactation,” said Dr. Cosmas Van De Ven with the University of Michigan Health Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital.

“This is reassuring news for pregnant people who want to get vaccinated but may still be hesitant. The research shows no evidence of any harm – only benefits – for newborns,” Van De Ven said in a statement.

Women who are trying to get pregnant should also get vaccinated, Duke’s Swamy said.

“There has been no concern whatsoever that a woman trying to conceive, the vaccine would have any impact on their ability to conceive,” she said. “There is no evidence that vaccination causes early pregnancy loss.”

Swamy also dismissed myths that the vaccines can cause infertility. “There has been no concern with the vaccine itself on infertility. That’s been one of the significant myths out there that the vaccine could cause infertility in women and in men. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever. There is no scientific or biologically plausible reason why the vaccine would cause infertility,” she said.

There’s been no sign that the vaccine could harm a developing fetus, Swamy said.

She said obstetricians have not recommended one vaccine over another for pregnant women under 50 years old. “We’ve suggested that women under the age of 50, which would generally include almost all pregnant women, may want to consider the risks and benefits of the J&J vaccine.”

Because of the slim risk for blood clots from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, women over 50 should take the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

Newborn babies can’t wear a mask or get vaccinated, but they can still catch the coronavirus.

“Masks are only recommended after a few years or life so we really want to make sure people aren’t trying to use masks on newborn infants. That could cause other potential concerns,” Swamy said.

“Making sure that we use a strategy that in the past we’ve called cocooning. Surround the infant with protection. If you can make sure that anyone (around) the infant is vaccinated, and if they’re not vaccinated, that you’re thinking about distancing, that you are using the same practices with mask-wearing and hand hygiene around your infant as well,” she said.