A 32-year-old woman has died from COVID-19 and doctors could not save her 30-week-old fetus in an emergency, a hospital in Jerusalem announced Sunday.
The woman, Osnat Ben Shitrit, was healthy until she recently contracted the coronavirus and had previously had four smooth pregnancies that ended in straight births, a spokeswoman for the Hadassah Medical Center told The Times of Israel.
The woman was not vaccinated.
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The fetus was not infected with the virus but was born in a critical condition and did not survive, Hadassah said.
A COVID-19 patient receives a family visit at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, on February 1, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90)
Hadassah’s news echoed throughout the Israeli health system, while doctors warned that it illustrated the increased danger posed by the British variant, which is now responsible for almost all Israeli COVID cases, to pregnant women and fetuses.
While recently the concern about the British tribe has focused on its transmissibility, not on virulence, it is likely to affect pregnant women more than the usual stress. Last month, when the British variant spread, Israel approved vaccinations for pregnant women and began encouraging women to get the shots.
“This news raises a red flag about the dangers of COVID-19 for pregnant women,” said prof. Galia Grisaru-Kiss, director of the infectious diseases department at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, told The Times of Israel.
Ben Shitrit, a resident of the Jerusalem area, was admitted to hospital last Tuesday due to respiratory distress and deteriorated rapidly on Saturday night. Doctors noticed damage to several of her organs, and a large team, including cardiologists and gynecologists, was assembled at her bedside.
Medical teams put on safety equipment while working in the coronavirus ward of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem on February 1, 2021 (Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90).
According to a statement from Hadassah, medics made “very prolonged” resuscitation efforts and performed an emergency caesarean section. But the mother is dead, and ‘despite tremendous efforts to save and save the fetus’ life in the premature intensive care unit’, it did not survive.
Staff were left in an ’emotional storm’ and the hospital ‘shared in the heavy grief of the family’, the statement said.
Grisaru-Soen said: “The new variants, British and perhaps South African. it seems to be more dangerous for pregnant women, and we should encourage pregnant women to be vaccinated, at least after the first trimester. ”
On Tuesday, a stillborn fetus of a woman infected with the coronavirus in the city of Ashdod was found to carry the virus, which was infected by the placenta.
