Covid caused spike in premature births

Covid-19 caused an alarming surge in premature births, but vaccines were key to returning the early birth rate to pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis of birth records in the US. During the first two years of the pandemic, maternal Covid infection increases the probability of preterm delivery, defined as a birth that occurs before 37 weeks of gestation, by 1.2 percentage points (from 7.1 to 8.3 per cent). Covid virus caused immune and inflammation responses, and endangered pregnancies via deterioration of the placenta “This effect is roughly equivalent to in utero exposure to a 9 percentage point increase in the area-level unemployment rate — or to high-intensity wildfire smoke for 20 days — an enormous impact,” said the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Maternal Covid infection also led to higher rates of premature delivery before 32 weeks of gestation, resulting in infants facing the highest risk of mortality, morbidity, and developmental difficulties later in life. However, by 2022, when Covid-19 vaccines were readily available in the US, this effect disappeared — suggesting that vaccination against the coronavirus may have prevented thousands of preterm births, said researchers from the universities of Stanford and Wisconsin-Madison. Areas with high vaccination rates saw the harmful effects disappear a year earlier than areas with a slower vaccination uptake, they said in the paper.