Coronavirus: Majority of pregnant women who died were ethnic minority background, report finds

A majority of pregnant women who died from coronavirus during the peak of the pandemic were from an ethnic minority background, it has emerged.

A new study of more than a dozen women who died between March and May this year also heavily criticised the reorganisation of NHS services which it said contributed to poor care and the deaths of some of the women.

This included one woman who was twice denied an intensive care bed because there were none available, as well as women treated by inexperienced staff who had been redeployed by hospitals and who made mistakes in their treatment of the women.

The report, by experts at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, based at the University of Oxford, also criticised mental health services after four women died by suicide. The report said women were “bounced” between services which had stopped face-to-face assessments during the crisis.

The report looked at 16 women’s deaths in total. Eight women died from COVID-19, seven of whom had an ethnic minority background. Two women with Covid-19 died from unrelated causes, four died by suicide and two were victims of homicide.

In the report, published on Thursday, the authors concluded improvements in care could have been made in 13 of the deaths they examined. In six cases, improvements in care could have meant they survived.

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Source: The Independent, 21 August 2020