In this Covid wave, Israel has seen more young pregnant women with no comorbidities hospitalised than before. Of seven serious cases tested so far, six had the British B117 coronavirus variant.
jpost.com/health-science…
jpost.com/health-science…
This could just be a sampling issue. The B117 variant is something like 30-50% of all cases in Israel now. And perhaps it's more prevalent in ultra-Orthodox communities where the birth rate is high so there are a lot of pregnant women.
The UK has not reported that the B117 variant was more dangerous to pregnant women. As far as I know, no other country has seen this (yet).
That said, yesterday the UK said that there was initial weak evidence that the B117 variant could cause more serious disease as well as being more infectious. theguardian.com/world/2021/jan…
The missing piece here might be viral load. If the B117 variant causes infected people to express more virus, that *could* account for both some of its increased infectivity, and it causing more severe disease too. theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…
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