Pregnant women are being urged to get vaccinated and continue safeguarding themselves against covid19, given there was an uptick in the number of pregnant women contracting covid19 in November.

During Monday’s covid19 virtual media briefing, director of women’s health at the Ministry of Health Dr Adesh Sirjusingh said 150 pregnant women contracted covid19 in November, the highest number in a month since September, when there were 161.

Since the start of the pandemic, 1,002 pregnant women have caught covid19, but only 58 of those cases were recorded in 2020.

A majority of the cases (504) were recorded between January and August 2021, followed by the peak in cases (161) in September.

While there was a decrease in cases (126) in October, there was an increase in November.

As of Monday, there had been only three recorded covid19 cases in pregnant women in December.

Sirjusingh commented, “I am reminding everyone that pregnancy is a very high-risk condition if you contract covid and become symptomatic.

“We’d be considering our pregnant women as being some level of physiologically and immunologically compromised.”

Since 2017, Sirjusingh explained that the country has been making progress in reducing its infant mortality rate, but covid19 is reversing the trend.

“For four consecutive years (2017-2020), we achieved what is called the sustainable development goals targets, which are (fewer) than 30 (deaths) per 1,000 live births. We had four or (fewer) maternal deaths for four consecutive years.

“For this year, we have seven maternal deaths in total, instead of the lower level of four. So we will not be meeting our targets for this year. “

Sirjusingh said there have also been four confirmed cases of mother-child transmission of covid19 because babies are swabbed at birth for covid19, which is now a standard protocol.

In two of the four cases, the babies were born healthy and asymptomatic. However, there was also a stillbirth and one case is still being investigated.

“These four cases that I did mention are in four newborn babies at delivery, where we actually picked up and we believed they are mother-child transmission.”

“Very early in the pandemic, we saw some cases in China where they had mother-child transmission.

“There remains low incidence of these cases happening, and the exact mechanisms (of how the transmission occurs) aren’t quite clear yet.”

He is now pleading with pregnant women to get vaccinated to reduce the chances of their getting severely ill or hospitalised if they get covid19.

He is also calling on them, and those around them, to follow the basic covid19 preventative measures.

“What we have been finding is people who are unvaccinated and pregnant women who are unvaccinated have been bringing covid into their homes and infecting these higher-risk populations.”

“I am reiterating: the vaccine is safe in the breastfeeding population. Since the end of June, we have approved Sinopharm for use in our breastfeeding population.

“We also have approved Pfizer BioNTech for the