NYC Hospital Finds High COVID-19 Infection Rate, but Few Symptoms, in Pregnant Women

[gargamon]

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-hospital-finds-high-covid-19-infection-rate-but-few-symptoms-in-pregnant-women/2372863/

 

One hospital screened more than 200 delivering moms and found nearly 14 percent had the virus but no symptoms

 

What to Know

• One NYC hospital instituted mandatory COVID-19 screening March 22 for all pregnant women who came in to give birth
• They found that nearly 14 percent of those women were positive for COVID-19 but had no symptoms
• One prominent doctor said the findings might suggest that the infection rate in the city as a whole is higher than thought

About 1.3 percent of New York City's population has already tested positive for COVID-19, but a small sample at one hospital suggests that among pregnant women, it is possible that infection rates could be substantially higher.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a letter Monday from four doctors at Columbia University Medical Center, recounting test data from pregnant women who came to the hospital's facilities for delivery between March 22 and April 4.

Of 215 women, just four had symptoms of COVID-19 when screened at admission. Among the rest, 210 submitted to nasal swab tests -- and 29 of them, or 13.7 percent of the total, were positive despite having no symptoms at all.

Of that group, three developed a fever after giving birth but while still in the hospital. (The letter does not detail their ultimate outcome, nor does it say what happened to the other women who tested positive but did not display symptoms while hospitalized.)

"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. Moreover, the true prevalence of infection may be underreported because of false negative results of tests to detect SARS-CoV-2," the doctors wrote.

While they limited their observations to pregnant women, others took their data to suggest it was possible -- possible -- that the infection rate in the city as a whole could be higher than currently believed.

"This study suggests that in hot spots like New York City, the level of #COVID19 exposure (and rates of some immunity once serology studies are in place) could be high. Not the 50%-66% needed to confer herd immunity, but much more than 10% in hot spots like parts of New York City," Scott Gottlieb, the former Manhattan physician and FDA commissioner, wrote on Twitter.

 

White House officials have already said that the "attack rate" of the virus in New York City is substantially higher than the rest of the country. (The World Health Organization defines attack rate as the proportion of a population at risk for an illness who contract that illness.)

As of Tuesday morning, New York City accounted for nearly 20 percent of all U.S. cases of COVID-19 and more than one-third of all deaths in the country.

[gargamon]

I would think it's actually higher than the mentioned 14% if you consider that some may have had it and beat it, so they would no longer test positive(I think). You would need antibody tests to be able to count these.

[Pravda]

who's the hunsum man in your avatar?

[scubascuba3]

Maybe some truth in it, Boris's pregnant bird seemed to have got over it quickly

[Sheryl]

They aren't suggesting that asymptomatic cases are mote common in pregnant women, This just happens to be about the only comprehensive screening to have been done so far (i.e. screening of everybody as opposed to people with symptoms or known exposure).

 

More likely it is indicative of what the actual incidence was in the general population.

 

There was a study done in the German city with the highest incidence of COVID, using antibody test and a random representative sample.

 

They also came up with 15%. Which reduced the mortality rate to around 0.37%.

 

15% while not at all surprising, is unfortunately not at all good news in terms of future prospects.

 

There is also a multi-country study about to launch

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/these-are-answers-we-need-who-plans-global-study-discover-true-extent-coronavirus

[Monomial]

I don't think this statistic has anything to do with pregnant women. Instead, it looks more and more like Covid-19 is an almost exclusively an asymptomatic virus for everyone.  If so, and because testing is only done on symptoms, chances are very high that a huge percentage of the planet already has this disease.

 

https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/14/coronavirus-boston-homeless-testing

 

36% of everyone at the homeless shelter tested positive. Nobody had symptoms. Following on, only 1 person later developed symptoms and had to be hospitalized.

 

So there are at least 2 verified data points now indicating that asymptomatic infections are extremely common.

 

The epidemiologists need to scrap everything and to go back to the very beginning and reconsider their models and whether this shut down makes any sense at all in light of this new information. If most people are in fact asymptomatic, then any thing short of a complete lock down and total quarantine, including on essential goods, makes very little sense. And a draconian, global lock down of absolutely everyone, most of whom show zero symptoms, is almost certainly impractical.

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Monomial