The World Health Organization is calling for pregnant women who have yet to get fully inoculated against COVID-19 to get their vaccine, which can help protect themselves and their children and has praised Thailand and other countries’ efforts to inoculate this population.
Dr. Jos Vandelaer, WHO Representative to Thailand, said two doses of COVID-19 vaccine can help reduce the severity and chances of death, as the chance of infection is three times higher among pregnant women and babies.
Meanwhile, data from the United Kingdom shows around 98% of pregnant women infected with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
A YouGov survey conducted by WHO Country Office for Thailand shows around 31% of the clinically vulnerable population in Thailand are still unvaccinated, which is a larger proportion compared to the unvaccinated portion of the general Thai population at 21%.
The organisation praised 75 countries around the world, including Thailand, for the focus on the pregnant women population in their national inoculation campaigns.
A statistic from the Royal Thai College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists shows a death rate among pregnant women this year at 1.85%, a 2.5 times higher figure than the general population.
Half of the pregnant women who died from COVID-19 lost their lives before giving birth, while around 1.8% of the babies from infected mothers did not survive. Preterm labors are also more commonly found among infected mothers, with the mother-to-child infection rate found at 11.8%.