New research has been trying to find the reason for pregnant women not showing any symptoms of coronavirus but testing positive for the virus. The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, assesses the reason why women from New York who recently gave birth tested positive for the coronavirus.
The research studied 215 births between March 22 and April 4 at the New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center. During the swab tests, 33 women who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 didn't show any symptom. The findings pointed to the need for more testing in the country.
Another study by the US National Institutes of Health has also studied patients who tested positive for the coronavirus but were not diagnosed by looking for antibodies in the bloodstream.
Showed signs after birth
The study said that 10 per cent of the women who tested positive for the novel coronavirus showed the signs before discharge, that is within at least two days. The research on pregnant women also went into the intake of medicines and other factors in understanding the asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus.
The need for universal testing was emphasised throughout the research where they argued that testing could help in separating the patients tested positive for coronavirus from the patients who tested negative.
The Columbia University Irving Medical Center had set up universal testing for all women admitted for delivery. They had two confirmed cases of coronavirus among the patients. There are cases of false negatives among the patients which has also raised an alarm among the doctors while testing the patients.
Another study by the Columbia University Medical Center published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology also found that 80 per cent of women who were admitted in the hospital for delivery had mild symptoms of coronavirus. This study also pitched for universal testing because of the threat the virus poses to pregnant women and other vulnerable people.
